Galaxy v21n01 (1962 10)

OCTOBER • 1 962 • 5C

Ti/ %, 1 /^ V Ray Bradbury returns will

is Yao7TZ' *S° COME into my cellar

eginning A PLAGUE OF PYTHONS by Frederik - Pohl ^

THE BALLAD OF LOST C’MEL

by.Cordwain^r S mith

m- \ .

YOURSI

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CONTENTS

SERIAL — First of Two Parts

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS 112

by Frederik Pohl

NOVELLA

THE EARTH MAN’S BURDEN 44

by Donald E. Westlake

NOVELETTES

THE BALLAD OF LOST C’MELL 8

by Cordwainer Smith

WHO DARES A BULBUR EAT? 174

by Gordon R. Dickson

SHORT STORIES

COME INTO MY CELLAR 29

by Ray Bradbury

A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS 83

by Bill Doede

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS 97

by Jim Harmon

ROBERTA 159

by Margaret St. Clair

BIMMIE SAYS 166

by Sydney Van Scyoc

SCIENCE FEATURE

FOR YOUR INFORMATION 73

by Willy Ley

DEPARTMENTS

THE BUSINESS OF BEING BAD 4

by the Editor

FORECAST 82

GALAXY’S FIVE STAR SHELF 191

by Floyd C. Gale

Cover by VIRGIL FINLAY from THE BALLAD OF LOST C’MELL
Next issue (December) on sale October 9th

The Large Magellanic Cloud, an
irregularly shaped galaxy which
is a satellite of our own. The
Cloud contains the star S
Doradus, some 500,000 times
brighter than the Sun, the hot-
test star known.

ROBERT M. GUINN

Publisher

FREDERIK POHL

Editor

WILLY LEY

Science Editor

SAM RUVIDICH

Art Director

GALAXY MAGAZINE is published
bi-monthly by Galaxy Publishing
Corporation. Main offices: 421
Hudson Street, New York 14,
N. Y. 500 per copy. Subscrip-
tion: (6 copies) $2.50 per year
in the United States, Canada,
Mexico, South and Central
America and U. S. Possessions.
Elsewhere $3.50. Second-class
postage paid at New York, N. Y.
and Holyoke, Mass. Copyright,
New York 1962, by Galaxy Pub-
lishing Corporation Robert M.
Guinn, President. All rights, in-
cluding translations reserved.
All material submitted must be
accompanied by self-addressed
stamped envelopes. The pub-
lisher assumes no responsibility
for unsolicited material. All
stories printed in this magazine
are fiction, and any similarity
between characters and actual
persons is coincidental.

Printed in the U. S. A.

By The Guinn Co., inc. N. Y.
Title Reg. U. S. Pat. Off.

THE BUSINESS OF BEING BAD

A LONG ABOUT now the an-
nual prizes for worthy con-
tributions to science fiction will
be awarded. One of them will,
as usual, go to somebody for the
category called “best dramatic
performance on television or mo-
tion pictures.” If past perform-
ance is any criterion, it will go
to a television show that about
one voter out of four has seen,
and fewer than half of those
really care for.

The unhappy fact is that for
this prize there is very little com-
petition. Science fiction on tele-
vision is bad enough — if there
is an area of TV where Commis-
sioner Minow’s term “wasteland”
indubitably applies, it is in its
science-fiction dramas — and as
for good science-fiction movies,
there just ain’t no sich animal.
What was the last good one you
saw? Most science-fiction readers

have trouble naming anything
more recent than The Forbidden
Planet . . . and that was half a
dozen years ago.

Yet there are plenty of science-
fiction stories in print that seem
admirably adapted to motion
pictures. Why in the world
doesn’t some smart Hollywood
producer make a few of them?

T HERE ARE answers to that
question, and we’ve gone to
some trouble to learn a few of
them.

The first answer is a single
word: Money.

There are two kinds of mo-
tion pictures being made today,
the very big ones and the very
little. The very big ones repre-
sent such a titanic investment of
capital and effort that the pro-
ducers will not bet except on a
fixed race. That is why there are

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4

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$25,000,000 remakes of ancient
stories; the producers reason that
if it made money once it will
make money again, and let the
other fellow take a chance on
something new.

The trouble with that, from
our point of view, is that few
really big sf movies have ever
been made. Thus there isn’t
much to look for in the way of
remakes.

So barring an occasional cour-
ageous (and thus, in the judg-
ment of his peers, crazy) experi-
menter, we can’t hope for a great
deal in the way of high-budget
science-fiction movies. That
leaves us the Grade B artists.

To produce a quickie for dis-
tribution as the second half of
a drive-in’s double bill (and ulti-
mate consumption on The Late,
Late Show) costs not much more
than fifty thousand dollars. Some
of them have been made for even
less. This is practically petty
cash by Hollywood standards (it
represents about a week’s pay for
an Elizabeth Taylor), and to
make it possible every cost is
pared to the bone. Shooting time
is held to a single week. Re-
hearsals are very few. Costumes
are picked up at Army 8s Navy
surplus stores; sets are stark,
cheap and flimsy. If something
goes wrong in a take it may not
even be shot over again. The
writer (who is often the pro-

ducer, as well as the director)
hastily tinkers up the script to
allow the boner, and shooting
goes on.

In spite of all this it is aston-
ishing how competently the ac-
tors act, the directors direct, the
photographers shoot and the spe-
cial-effects men create plausible
gadgets. These men and women
are highly skilled professionals.
They do everything they can.
What makes the average cheapie
as terribly bad as it is is not the
low cost of its production. The
trouble is that whatever money
does get spent is spent on the
wrong story.

Ten years or so ago — in the
remote Eocene of television —
we were privileged to sit in on
some of the science-fiction pro-
grams of that era, Captain Video,
Tales of Tomorrow and a couple
of others. The average budget of
these enterprises was a closely
guarded secret, but it was at least
an order of magnitude smaller
than today’s cheapest motion pic-
ture. The principal staple of scen-
ery was painted canvas. Stone
walls rippled to the touch. Ten
dollars’ worth of electrical parts
had to do as a $50,000,000 syn-
chrotron.

Yet there was hardly one of
those old TV programs that was
not better than most of the low-
budget motion pictures of today!

The reason they were good is

6

GALAXY

that the producers had the wit
to make an unusual decision.
When they wanted science-fiction
stories written they took their
courage in their hands and em-
ployed science-fiction writers
write them.

Often it was the science-fiction
writers themselves — Sheckley,
Sturgeon, Kornbluth and many
others — who prepared the ac-
tual shooting script. When the
producers could not do that, they
employed other script writers,
but took the trouble to have
them understand what the origi-
nal story was all about and to
convert that story to dramatic
presentation . . . instead of the
present custom of throwing ev-
erything but the name of one
character out of the window and
remaking Buck Rogers.

I T’S TRUE that science-fiction
stories often rely on rather
sophisticated ideas — “sophisti-
cated” in the sense that they are
developed from previous ideas —
and it is not always easy to get
everything possible out of them
unless the audience has had some
background in the field.

It does not, however, follow
from that that the only way to
handle science fiction is to ex-
tract its ideas and destroy them.

Even if some nuances are
missed by the non-specialist pub-
lic, there’s plenty left to provide

entertainment and pleasure.
There are dozens of good, sound,
enjoyable science-fiction stories
already in print in science-fiction
books and magazines that need
hardly the changing of a word,
and that would still be 99% in-
telligible to anyone capable of
reading without moving his lips.

Maybe better times are ahead.
Right at this moment there are
a number of fine science-fiction
writers who have turned to TV
and motion pictures — Robert
Bloch, Fritz Leiber, Jerome Bix-
by, Arthur C. Clarke, John
Wyndham and half a dozen
others are in some way or an-
other involved — and from their
efforts we may yet see great
things.

We also may not, because the
producers not only seem to make
it a point to have non-sf writers
write their science-fiction, but
when a science-fiction writer
comes along they seem to make
it their business to put him to
work on a mystery or a Western

— instead of what he can do best
of all.

Science-fiction doesn’t have to
be relegated to the part of the
drive-in program where the cus-
tomers quit watching the screen

— but it is likely to go on that
way, until some producer dis-
covers that it really has things
to say that cannot be said in any
other form! — THE EDITOR

Her ancestors were cats. Her heart was human, though, and
she gave it once and for all.

THE BALLAD OF
LOST C’MELL

CHE was a girly girl and they
^ were true men, the lords of
creation, but she pitted her wits
against them and she won. It had
never happened before, and it is
sure never to happen again, but
she did win. She was not even of
human extraction. She was cat-
derived, though human in out-
ward shape, which explains the C
in front of her name. Her father’s
name was C’mackintosh and her
name was C’mell. She won her
trick against the lawful and as-
sembled Lords of the Instrumen-
tality.

It all happened at Earthport,

greatest of buildings, smallest of
cities, standing twenty-five kilo-
meters high at the Western edge
of the Smaller Sea of Earth.

Jestocost had an office outside
the fourth valve.

I

J ESTOCOST liked the morning
sunshine, while most of the
other Lords of the Instrumentali-
ty did not, so that he had no
trouble in keeping the office and
the apartments which he had
selected. His main office was
ninety meters deep, twenty

8

GALAXY

By CORDWAINER SMITH Illustrated by FINLAY

She got the which of the what-she-did,

Hid the bell with a blot, she did,

But she fell in love with a hominid.

Where is the which of the what-she-did?

from THE BALLAD OF LOST C’MELL

L

THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL

9

meters high, twenty meters broad.
Behind it was the “fourth valve,”
almost a thousand hectares in ex-
tent. It was shaped helically, like
an enormous snail. Jestocost’s
apartment, big as it was, was
merely one of the pigeonholes in
the muffler on the rim of Earth-
port. Earthport stood like an
enormous wineglass, reaching
from the magma to the high at-
mosphere.

Earthport had been built dur-
ing mankind’s biggest mechanical
splurge. Though men had had nu-
clear rockets since the beginning
of consecutive history, they had
used chemical rockets to load the
interplanetary ion-drive and nu-
clear-drive vehicles or to assemble
the photonic sail-ships for inter-
stellar cruises. Impatient with the
troubles of taking things bit by
bit into the sky, they had worked
out a billion-ton rocket, only to
find that it ruined whatever coun-
tryside it touched in landing. The
Daimoni — people of Earth ex-
traction, who came back from
somewhere beyond the stars —
had helped men build it of
weatherproof, rustproof, time-
proof, stressproof material. Then
they had gone away and had
never come back.

Jestocost often looked around
his apartment and wondered what
it might have been like when
white-hot gas, muted to a whisper,
surged out of the valve into his

own chamber and the sixty-four
other chambers like it. Now he
had a back wall of heavy timber,
and the valve itself was a great
hollow cave where a few wild
things lived. Nobody needed that
much space any more. The cham-
bers were useful, but the valve
did nothing. Pianoforming ships
whispered in from the stars; they
landed at Earthport as a matter
of legal convenience, but they
made no noise and they certainly
had no hot gases.

Jestocost looked at the high
clouds far below him and talked
to himself,

“Nice day. Good air. No trou-
ble. Better eat.”

Jestocost often talked like that
to himself. He was an individual,
almost an eccentric. One of the
top council of mankind, he had
problems, but they were not per-
sonal problems. He had a Rem-
brandt hanging above his bed —
the only Rembrandt known in the
world, just as he was possibly the
only person who could appreciate
a Rembrandt. He had the tapes-
tries of a forgotten empire hang-
ing from his back wall. Every
morning the sun played a grand
opera for him, muting and light-
ing and shifting the colors so that
he could almost imagine that the
old days of quarrel, murder and
high drama had come back to
Earth again. He had a copy of
Shakespeare, a copy of Colegrove

10

GALAXY

and two pages of the Book of
Ecclesiates in a locked box beside
his bed. Only forty-two people in
the universe could read Ancient
English, and he was one of them.
He drank wine, which he had
made by his own robots in his
own vineyards on the Sunset
coast. He was a man, in short,
who had arranged his own life to
live comfortably, selfishly and
well on the personal side, so that
he could give generously and im-
partially of his talents on the
official side.

When he awoke on this par-
ticular morning, he had no idea
that a beautiful girl was about to
fall hopelessly in love with him
— that he would find, after a
hundred years and more of ex-
perience in government, another
government on earth just as
strong and almost as ancient as
his own — that he would willingly
fling himself into conspiracy and
danger for a cause which he only
half understood. All these things
were mercifully hidden from him
by time, so that his only question
on arising was, should he or
should he not have a small cup
of white wine with his breakfast.
On the 173rd day of each year,
he always made a point of eating
eggs. They were a rare treat, and
he did not want to spoil himself
by having too many, nor to de-
prive himself and forget a treat
by having none at all. He put-

tered around the room, mutter-
ing, “White wine? White wine?”

/^’MELL was coming into his
life, but he did not know it.
She was fated to win; that part,
she herself did not know.

Ever since mankind had gone
through the Rediscovery of Man,
bringing back governments, mon-
ey, newspapers, national lan-
guages, sickness and occasional
death, there had been the problem
of the underpeople — people who
were not human, but merely hu-
manly shaped from the stock of
Earth animals. They could speak,
sing, read, write, work, love and
die; but they were not covered by
human law, which simply defined
them as “homunculi” and gave
them a legal status close to ani-
mals or robots. Real people from
off-world were always called “ho-
minids.”

Most of the underpeople did
their jobs and accepted their
half-slave status without question.
Some became famous — C’mack-
intosh had been the first earth-
being to manage a thousand-
meter broad-jump under normal
gravity. His picture was seen in
a thousand worlds. His daughter,
C’mell, was a girly girl, earning
her living by welcoming human
beings and hominids from the out-
worlds and making them feel at
home when they reached Earth.
She had the privilege of working

THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL

11

at Earthport, but she had the duty
of working very hard for a living
which did not pay well. Human
beings and hominids had lived so
long in an affluent society that
they did not know what it meant
to be poor. But the Lords of the
Instrumentality had decreed that
underpeople — derived from an-
imal stock — should live under the
economics of the Ancient World;
they had to have their own kind
of money to pay for their rooms,
their food, their possessions and
the education of their children. If
they became bankrupt, they went
to the Poorhouse, where they
were killed painlessly by means
of gas.

It was evident that humanity,
having settled all of its own basic
problems, was not quite ready to
let Earth animals, no matter how
much they might be changed, as-
sume a full equality with man.

The Lord Jestocost, seventh of
that name, opposed the policy. He
was a man who had little love,
no fear, freedom from ambition
and a dedication to his job: but
there are passions of government
as deep and challenging as the
emotions of love. Two hundred
years of thinking himself right
and of being outvoted had in-
stilled in Jestocost a furious desire
to get things done his own way.

Jestocost was one of the few
true men who believed in the
rights of the underpeople. He did

not think that mankind would
ever get around to correcting an-
cient wrongs unless the under-
people themselves had some of
the tools of power — weapons,
conspiracy, wealth and (above
all) organization with which to
challenge man. He was not afraid
of revolt, but he thirsted for jus-
tice with an obsessive yearning
which overrode all other consider-
ations.

When the Lords of the Instru-
mentality heard that there was
the rumor of a conspiracy among
the underpeople, they left it to
the robot police to ferret out.

Jestocost did not.

He set up his own police, using
underpeople themselves for the
purpose, hoping to recruit enemies
who would realize that he was a
friendly enemy and who would
in course of time bring him into
touch with the leaders of the
underpeople.

If those leaders existed, they
were clever. What sign did a girly
girl like C’mell ever give that she
was the spearhead of a criss-cross
of agents who had penetrated
Earthport itself? They must, if
they existed, be very, very careful.
The telepathic monitors, both ro-
botic and human, kept every
thought-band under surveillance
by random sampling. Even the
computers showed nothing more
significant than improbable
amounts of happiness in minds

12

GALAXY

which had no objective reason for
being happy.

The death of her father, the
most famous cat-athlete which
the underpeople had ever pro-
duced, gave Jestocost his first
definite clue.

H E WENT to the funeral him-
self, where the body was
packed in an ice-rocket to be shot
into space. The mourners were
thoroughly mixed with the curi-
osity-seekers. Sport is internation-
al, inter-race, inter-world, inter-
species. Hominids were there:
true men, 100% human, they
looked weird and horrible because
they or their ancestors had under-
gone bodily modifications to meet
the life conditions of a thousand
worlds.

Underpeople, the animal-de-
rived “homunculi,” were there,
most of them in their work
clothes, and they looked more
human than did the human be-
ings from the outer worlds. None
were allowed to grow up if they
were less than half the size of
man, or more than six times the
size of man. They all had to have
human features and acceptable
human voices. The punishment
for failure in their elementary
schools was death. Jestocost
looked over the crowd and won-
dered to himself, “We have set up
the standards of the toughest kind
of survival for these people and

we give them the most terrible
incentive, life itself, as the con-
dition of absolute progress. What
fools we are to think that they
will not overtake us!” The true
people in the group did not seem
to think as he did. They tapped
the underpeople peremptorily
with their canes, even though this
was an underperson’s funeral, and
the bear-men, bull-men, cat-men
and others yielded immediately
and with a babble of apology.

C’mell was close to her father’s
icy coffin.

Jestocost not only watched her;
she was pretty to watch. He com-
mitted an act which was an in-
decency in an ordinary citizen but
lawful for a Lord of the Instru-
mentality: he peeped her mind.

And then he found something
which he did not expect.

As the coffin left, she cried,
“Ee-telly-kelly, help me! help
me!”

She had thought phonetically,
not in script, and he had only the
raw sound on which to base a
search.

Jestocost had not become a
Lord of the Instrumentality with-
out applying daring. His mind
was quick, too quick to be deeply
intelligent. He thought by gestalt,
not by logic. He determined to
force his friendship on the girl.

He decided to await a propi-
tious occasion, and then changed
his mind about the time.

THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL

13

As she went home from the
funeral, he intruded upon the
circle of her grimfaced friends,
underpeople who were trying to
shield her from the condolences
of ill-mannered but well-meaning
sports enthusiasts.

She recognized him, and
showed him the proper respect.

“My Lord, I did not expect you
here. You knew my father?”

He nodded gravely and ad-
dressed sonorous words of con-
solation and sorrow, words which
brought a murmur of approval
from humans and underpeople
alike.

But with his left hand hanging
slack at his side, he made the per-
petual signal of alarm! alarm!
used within the Earthport staff
— a repeated tapping of the
thumb against the third finger —
when they had to set one another
on guard without alerting the off-
world transients.

She was so upset that she al-
most spoiled it all. While he was
still doing his pious doubletalk,
she cried in a loud clear voice:
“You mean me?”

And he went on with his con-
dolences: “. . . and I do mean you,
C’mell, to be the worthiest carrier
of your father’s name. You are
the one to whom we turn in this
time of common sorrow. Who
could I mean but you if I say
that C’mackintosh never did
things by halves, and died young

as a result of his own zealous con-
science? Good-by, C’mell, I go
back to ray office.”

She arrived forty minutes after
he did.

II

TTE FACED her straight away,
studying her face.

“This is an important day in
your life.”

“Yes, my Lord, a sad one.”

“I do not,” he said, “mean your
father’s death and burial. I speak
of the future to which we all must
turn. Right now, it’s you and me.”
Her eyes widened. She had not
thought that he was that kind of
man at all. He was an official who
moved freely around Earthport,
often greeting important offworld
visitors and keeping an eye on the
bureau of ceremonies. She was a
part of the reception team, when
a girly girl was needed to calm
down a frustrated arrival or to
postpone a quarrel. Like the
geisha of ancient Japan, she had
an honorable profession; she was
not a bad girl but a professionally
flirtatious hostess. She stared at
the Lord Jestocost. He did not
look as though he meant anything
improperly personal. But, thought
she, you can never tell about men.

“You know men,” he said, pass-
ing the initiative to her.

“I guess so,” she said. Her face
looked odd. She started to give

14

GALAXY

him smile #3 (extremely adhe-
sive ) which she had learned in the
girly-girl school. Realizing it was
wrong, she tried to give him an
ordinary smile. She felt she had
made a face at him.

“Look at me,” he said, “and see
if you can trust me. I am going to
take both our lives in my hands.”

She looked at him. What imag-
inable subject could involve him,
a Lord of the Instrumentality,
with herself, an undergirl? They
never had anything in common.
They never would.

But she stared at him.

“I want to help the under-
people.”

He made her blink. That was
a crude approach, usually fol-
lowed by a very raw kind of pass
indeed. But his face was illumi-
nated by seriousness. She waited.

“Your people do not have
enough political power even to
talk to us. I will not commit trea-
son to the true-human race, but
I am willing to give your side an
advantage. If you bargain better
with us, it will make all forms of
life safer in the long run.”

C’mell stared at the floor, her
red hair soft as the fur of a Per-
sian cat. It made her head seemed
bathed in flames. Her eyes looked
human, except that they had the
capacity of reflecting when light
struck them; the irises were the
rich green of the ancient cat.
When she looked right at him,

looking up from the floor, her
glance had the impact of a blow.
“What do you want from me?”

He stared right back. “Watch
me. Look at my face. Are you
sure, sure that I want nothing
from you personally?”

C^E looked bewildered. “What
^ else is there to want from me
except personal things? I am a
girly girl. I’m not a person of any
importance at all, and I do not
have much of an education. You
know more, sir, than I will ever
know.”

“Possibly,” he said, watching
her.

She stopped feeling like a girly
girl and felt like a citizen. It made
her uncomfortable.

“Who,” he said, in a voice of
great solemnity, “is your own
leader?”

“Commissioner Teadrinker, sir.
He’s in charge of all outworld
visitors.” She watched Jestocost
carefully; he still did not look as
if he were playing tricks.

He looked a little cross. “I don’t
mean him. He’s part of my own
staff. Who’s your leader among
the underpeople?”

“My father was, but he died.”

Jestocost said. “Forgive me.
Please have a seat. But I don’t
mean that.”

She was so tired that she sat
down into the chair with an in-
nocent voluptuousness which

would have disorganized any or-
dinary man’s day. She wore girly
girl clothes, which were close
enough to the everyday fashion
to seem agreeably modish when
she stood up. In line with her
profession, her clothes were de-
signed to be unexpectedly and
provocatively revealing when she
sat down — not revealing enough
to shock the man with their
brazenness, but so slit, tripped
and cut that he got far more visual
stimulation than he expected.

“I must ask you to pull your
clothing together a little,” said
Jestocost in a clinical turn of
voice. “I am a man, even if I am
an official, and this interview is
more important to you and to me
than any distraction would be.”

She was a little frightened by
his tone. She had meant no chal-
lenge. With the funeral that day,
she meant nothing at all; these
clothes were the only kind she
had.

He read all this in her face.

Relentlessly, he pursued the
subject.

“Young lady, I asked about
your leader. You name your boss
and you name your father. I want
your leader.”

“I don’t understand,” she said,
on the edge of a sob, “I don’t un-
derstand.”

Then, he thought to himself,
I’ve got to take a gamble. He
thrust the mental dagger home,

almost drive his words like steel
straight into her face. “Who . . .”
he said, slowly and icily, “is . . .
Ee . . . telly . . . kelly?”

The girl’s face had been cream-
colored, pale with sorrow. Now
she went white. She twisted away
from him. Her eyes glowed like
twin fires.

Her eyes . . . like twin fires.

(No undergirl, thought Jesto-
cost as he reeled, could hypnotize
me.)

Her eyes . . . were like cold fires.

The room faded around him.
The girl disappeared. Her eyes
became a single white, cold fire.

Within this fire stood the figure
of a man. His arms were wings,
but he had human hands growing
at the elbows of his wings. His
face was clear, white, cold as the
marble of an ancient statue; his
eyes were opaque white. “I am
the E-telekeli. You will believe in
me. You may speak to my daugh-
ter C’mell.”

The image faded.

Jestocost saw the girl staring
as she sat awkwardly on the chair,
looking blindly through him. He
was on the edge of making a joke
about her hypnotic capacity when
he saw that she was still deeply
hypnotized, even after he had
been released. She had stiffened
and again her clothing had fallen
into its planned disarray. The ef-
fect was not stimulating; it was
pathetic beyond words, as though

16

GALAXY

an accident had happened to a
pretty child. He spoke to her.

TTE SPOKE to her, not really
expecting an answer.

“Who are you?” he said to her,
testing her hypnosis.

“I am"he whose name is never
said aloud,” said the girl in a
sharp whisper, “I am he whose
secret you have penetrated. I
have printed my image and my
name in your mind.”

Jestocost did not quarrel with
ghosts like this. He snapped out
a decision. “If I open my mind,
will you search it while I watch
you? Are you good enough to do
that?”

“I am very good,” hissed the
voice in the girl’s mouth.

C’mell arose and put her two
hands on his shoulders. She
looked into his eyes. He looked
back. A strong telepath himself,
Jestocost was not prepared for
the enormous thought-voltage
which poured out of her.

Look in my mind, he com-
manded, for the subject of under-
people only.

I see it, thought the mind be-
hind C’mell.

Do you see what I mean to do
for the underpeople?

Jestocost heard the girl breath-
ing hard as her mind served as a
relay to his. He tried to remain
calm so that he could see which
part of his mind was being

searched. Very good so far, he
thought to himself. An intelli-
gence like that on Earth itself, he
thought — and we of the Lords
not knowing it!

The girl hacked out a dry little
laugh.

Jestocost thought at the mind,
Sorry. Go ahead.

This plan of yours — thought
the strange mind — may I see
more of it?

That’s all there is.

Oh, said the strange mind, you
want me to think for you. Can
you give me the keys in the Bank
and Bell which pertain to destroy-
ing underpeople?

You can have the information
keys if I can ever get them,
thought Jestocost, but not the
control keys and not the master
switch of the Bell.

Fair enough, thought the other
mind, and what do I pay for
them?

You support me in my policies
before the instrumentality. You
keep the underpeople reasonable,
if you can, when the time comes
to negotiate. You maintain honor
and good faith in all subsequent
agreements. But how can I get the
keys? It would take me a year to
figure them out myself.

Let the girl look once, thought
the strange mind, and I will be
behind her. Fair?

Fair, thought Jestocost.

Break? thought the mind.

THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL

17

How do we re-connect? thought
Jestocost back.

As before. Through the girl.
Never say my name. Don’t think
it if you can help it. Break?

Break! thought Jestocost.

The girl, who had been holding
his shoulders, drew his face down
and kissed him firmly and warm-
ly. He had never touched an un-
derperson before, and it never
had occurred to him that he might
kiss one. It was pleasant, but he
took her arms away from his
neck, half-turned her around, and
let her lean against him.

“Daddy!” she sighed happily.

Suddenly she stiffened, looked
at his face, and sprang for the
door. “Jestocost!” she cried. “Lord
Jestocost! What am I doing here?”

“Your duty is done, my girl.
You may go.”

She staggered back into the
room. “I am going to be sick,” she
said. She vomited on his floor.

He pushed a button for a clean-
ing robot and slapped his desk-
top for coffee.

She relaxed and talked about
his hopes for the underpeople. She
stayed an hour. By the time she
left they had a plan. Neither of
them had mentioned E-telekeli,
neither had put purposes in the
open. If the monitors had been
listening, they would have found
no single sentence or paragraph
which was suspicious.

When she had gone, Jestocost

looked out of his window. He saw
the clouds far below and he knew
the world below him was in twi-
light. He had planned to help the
underpeople, and he had met ,
powers of which organized man-
kind had no conception or percep-
tion. He was righter than he had
thought. He had to go on through.

But as partner — C’mell herself!

Was there ever an odder diplo-
mat in the history of worlds?

Ill

TN LESS than a week they had
decided what to do. It was the
Council of the Lords of the In-
strumentality at which they
would work — the brain center
itself. The risk was high, but
the entire job could be done in a
few minutes if it were done at the
Bell itself.

This is the sort of thing which
interested Jestocost.

He did not know that C’mell
watched him with two different
facets of her mind. One side of
her was alertly and wholehearted-
ly his fellow-conspirator, utterly
in sympathy with the revolution-
ary aims to which they were both
committed. The other side of her
— was feminine.

She had a womanliness which
was truer than that of any homi-
nid woman. She knew the value
of her trained smile, her splendid-
ly kept red hair with its unimagin-

18

GALAXY

ably soft texture, her lithe young
figure with firm breasts and per-
suasive hips. She knew down to
the last millimeter the effect
which her legs had on hominid
men. True humans kept few se-
crets from her. The men betrayed
themselves by their unfulfillable
desires, the woman by their ir-
repressible jealousies. But she
knew people best of all by not
being one herself. She had to
learn by imitation, and imitation
is conscious. A thousand little
things which ordinary women
took for granted, or thought about
just once in a whole lifetime, were
subjects of acute and intelligent
study to her. She was a girl by
profession; she was a human by
assimilation; she was an inquisi-
tive cat in her genetic nature.
Now she was falling in love with
Jestocost, and she knew it.

Even she did not realize that
the romance would sometime leak
cut into rumor, be magnified into
legend, distilled into romance. She
had no idea of the ballad about
herself that would open with the
lines which became famous much
later:

She got the which of the what-she-did,

Hid the bell with a blot, she did,

But she fell in love with a hominid.

Where is the which of the what-she-did?

All this lay in the future, and
she did not know it.

She knew her own past.

She remembered the off-Earth
prince who had rested his head in
her lap and had said, sipping his
glass of motl by way of farewell:
“Funny, C’mell, you’re not even
a person and you’re the most in-
telligent human being I’ve met in
this place. Do you know it made
my planet poor to send me here?
And what did I get out of them?
Nothing, nothing, and a thousand
times nothing. But you, now. If
you’d been running the govern-
ment of Earth, I’d have gotten
what my people need, and this
world would be richer too. Man-
home, they call it. Manhome, my
eye! The only smart person on
it is a female cat.”

He ran his fingers around her
ankle. She did not stir. That was
part of hospitality, and she had
her own ways of making sure that
hospitality did not go too far.
Earth police were watching her;
to them, she was a convenience
maintained for outworld people,
something like a soft chair in the
Earthport lobbies or a drinking
fountain with acid-tasting water
for strangers who could not tol-
erate the insipid water of Earth.
She was not expected to have
feelings or to get involved. If she
had ever caused an incident, they
would have punished her fiercely,
as they often punished animals
or underpeople, or else (after a
short formal hearing with no ap-
peal) they would have destroyed

THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL

19

her, as the law allowed and cus-
tom encouraged.

She had kissed a thousand men,
maybe fifteen hundred. She had
made them feel welcome and she
had gotten their complaints or
their secrets out of them as they
left. It was a living, emotionally
tiring but intellectually very stim-
ulating. Sometimes it made her
laugh to look at human women
with their pointed-up noses and
their proud airs, and to realize
that she knew more about the
men who belonged to the human
women than the human women
themselves ever did.

O NCE A policewoman had had
to read over the record of two
pioneers from New Mars. C’mell
had been given the job of keeping
in very close touch with them.
When the policewoman got
through reading the report she
looked at C’mell and her face was
distorted with jealousy and prud-
ish rage.

“Cat, you call yourself. Cat!
You’re a pig, you’re a dog, you’re
an animal. You may be working
for Earth but don’t ever get the
idea that you’re as good as a per-
son. I think if s a crime that the
Instrumentality lets monsters like
you greet real human beings from
outside! I can’t stop it. But may
the Bell help you, girl, if you ever
touch a real Earth man! If you
ever get near one! If you ever try

tricks here! Do you understand
me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” C’mell had said.
To herself she thought, “That
poor thing doesn’t know how to
select her own clothes or how to
do her own hair. No wonder she
resents somebody who manages
to be pretty.”

Perhaps the policewoman
thought that raw hatred would be
shocking to C’mell. It wasn’t. Un-
derpeople were used to hatred,
and it was not any worse raw
than it was when cooked with
politeness and served like poison.
They had to live with it.

But now, it was all changed.

She had fallen in love with
Jestocost.

Did he love her?

Impossible. No, not impossible.
Unlawful, unlikely, indecent —
yes, all these, but not impossible.
Surely he felt something of her
love.

If he did, he gave no sign -of it.

People and underpeople had
fallen in love many times before.
The underpeople were always de-
stroyed and the real people brain-
washed. There were laws against
that kind of thing. The scientists
among people had created the
underpeople, had given them ca-
pacities which real people did not
have (the thousand-yard jump,
the telepath two miles under-
ground, the turtle-man waiting a
thousand years next to an emer-

20

GALAXY

gency door, the cow-man guard-
ing a gate without reward), and
the scientists had also given many
of the underpeople the human
shape. It was handier that way.
The human eye, the five-fingered
hand, the human size ■ — these
were convenient for engineering
reasons. By making underpeople
the same size and shape as people,
more or less, the scientists elimi-
nated the need for two or three or
a dozen different sets of furniture.
The human form was good
enough for all of them.

But they had forgotten the hu-
man heart.

And now she, C’mell, had fallen
in love with a man, a true man
old enough to have been her own
father’s grandfather.

But she didn’t feel daughterly
about him at all. She remembered
that with her own father there
was an easy comradeship, an in-
nocent and forthcoming affection,
which masked the fact that he
was considerably more cat-like
than she was. Between them there
was an aching void of forever-
unspoken words — things that
couldn’t quite be said by either of
them, perhaps things that couldn’t
be said at all. They were so close
to each other that they could get
no closer. This created enormous
distance, which was heartbreak-
ing but unutterable. Her father
had died, and now this true man
was here, with all the kindness —

“That’s it,” she whispered to
herself, “with all the kindness that
none of these passing men have
ever really shown. With all the
depth which my poor under-
people can never get. Not that
it’s not in them. But they’re born
like dirt, treated like dirt, put
away like dirt when we die. How
can any of my own men develop
real kindness? There’s a special
sort of majesty to kindness. It’s
the best part there is to being
people. And he has whole oceans
of it in him. And it’s strange,
strange, strange that he’s never
given his real love to any human
woman.”

She stopped, cold.

Then she consoled herself and
whispered on, “Or if he did, it’s
so long ago that it doesn’t matter
now. He’s got me. Does he know
it?”

IV

r T'HE Lord Jestocost did know,
and yet he didn’t. He was
used to getting loyalty from peo-
ple, because he offered loyalty
and honor in his daily work. He
was even familiar with loyalty be-
coming obsessive and seeking
physical form, particularly from
women, children and underpeople.
He had always coped with it be-
fore. He was gambling on the fact
that C’mell was a wonderfully in-
telligent person, and that as a

THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL

21

girly girl, working on the hospital-
ity staff of the Earthport police,
she must have learned to control
her personal feelings.

“We’re born in the wrong age,”
he thought, “when I meet the
most intelligent and beautiful fe-
male I’ve ever met, and then have
to put business first. But this stuff
about people and underpeople is
sticky. Sticky. We’ve got to keep
personalities out of it.”

So he thought. Perhaps he was
right.

If the nameless one, whom he
did not dare to remember, com-
manded an attack on the Bell it-
self, that was worth their lives.
Their emotions could not come
into it. The Bell mattered: justice
mattered: the perpetual return of
mankind to progress mattered. He
did not matter, because he had al-
ready done most of his work.
C’mell did not matter, because
their failure would leave her with
mere underpeople forever. The
Bell did count.

The price of what he proposed
to do was high, but the entire
job could be done in a few min-
utes if it were done at the Bell
itself.

The Bell, of course, was not a
Bell. It was a three-dimensional
situation table, three times the
height of a man. It was set one
story below the meeting room,
and shaped roughly like an an-
cient bell. The meeting table of

the Lords of the Instrumentality
had a circle cut out of it, so that
the Lords could look down into
the Bell at whatever situation one
of them called up either manually
or telepathically. The Bank below
it, hidden by the floor, was the
key memory-bank of the entire
system. Duplicates existed at
thirty-odd other places on Earth.
Two duplicates lay hidden in in-
terstellar space, one of them be-
side the ninety-million-mile gold-
colored ship left over from the
War against Raumsog and the
other masked as an asteroid.

Most of the Lords were off-
world on the business of the In-
strumentality.

Only three beside Jestocost
were present — the Lady Johanna
Gnade, the Lord Issan Olascoaga
and the Lord William Not-from-
here. (The Not-from-heres were
a great Norstrilian family which
had migrated back to Earth many
generations before.)

The E-telekeli told Jestocost
the rudiments of a plan.

He was to bring C’mell into the
chambers on a summons.

The summons was to be seri-
ous.

They should avoid her sum-
mary death by automatic justice,
if the relays began to trip.

C’mell would go into partial
trance in the chamber.

He was then to call the items
in the Bell which E-telekeli

22

GALAXY

1

wanted traced. A single call would
be enough. E-telekeli would take
the responsibility for tracing
them. The other Lords would be
distracted by him, E-telekeli.

It was simple in appearance.

The complication came in ac-
tion.

The plan seemed flimsy, but
there was nothing which Jestocost
could do at this time. He began
to curse himself for letting his
passion for policy involve him in
the intrigue. It was too late to
back out with honor; besides, he
had given his word; besides, he
liked C’mell — as a being, not as
a girly girl — and he would hate
to see her marked with disap-
pointment for life. He knew how
the underpeople cherished their
identities and their status.

With heavy heart but quick
mind he went to the council
chamber. A dog-girl, one of the
routine messengers whom he had
seen many months outside the
door, gave him the minutes.

He wondered how C’mell or
E-telekeli would reach him, once
he was inside the chamber with
its tight net of telepathic inter-
cepts.

He sat wearily at the table —

And almost jumped out of his
chair.

r T , HE conspirators had forged
the minutes themselves, and
the top item was: “C’mell daugh-

ter to C’mackintosh, cat-stock
(pmre) lot 1138, confession of.
Subject: conspiracy to export ho-
muncular material. Reference:
planet De Prinsensmacht.”

The Lady Johanna Gnade had
already pushed the buttons for
the planet concerned. The people
there, Earth by origin, were enor-
mously strong but they had gone
to great pains to maintain the
original Earth appearance. One
of their first-men was at the mo-
ment on Earth. He bore the title
of the Twilight Prince (Prins van
de Schemering) and he was on a
mixed diplomatic and trading mis-
sion.

Since Jestocost was a little late,
C’mell was being brought into the
room as he glanced over the min-
utes.

The Lord Not-from-here asked
Jestocost if he would preside.

“I beg you, sir and scholar,” he
said, “to join me in asking the
Lord Issan to preside this time.”

The presidency was a formal-
ity. Jestocost could watch the Bell
and Bank better if he did not
have to chair the meeting too.

C’mell wore the clothing of a
prisoner. On her it looked good.
He had never seen her wearing
anything but girly-girl clothes be-
fore. The pale-blue prison tunic
made her look very young, very
human, very tender and very
frightened. The cat family showed
only in the fiery cascade of her

THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL

23

mi

%

> IlK

h

4

hair and the lithe power of her
body as she sat, demure and erect.

Lord Issan asked her: “You
have confessed. Confess again.”

“This man,” and she pointed at
a picture of the Twilight Prince,
“wanted to go to the place where
they torment human children for
a show.”

“What!” cried three of the
Lords together.

“What place?” said the Lady
Johanna, who was bitterly in
favor of kindness.

“It’s run by a man who looks
like this gentleman here,” said
C’mell, pointing at Jestocost.
Quickly, so that nobody could
stop her, but modestly, so that
none of them thought to doubt
her, she circled the room and
touched Jestocost’s shoulder. He
felt a thrill of contact-telepathy
and heard bird-crackle in her
brain. Then he knew that the E-
telekeli was in touch with her.

“The man who has the place,”
said C’mell, “is five pounds lighter

than this gentleman, two inches
shorter, and he has red hair. His
place is at the Cold Sunset corner
of Earthport, down the boulevard
and under the boulevard. Under-
people, some of them with bad
reputations, live in that neighbor-
hood.”

The Bell went milky, flashing
through hundreds of combinations
of bad underpeople in that part of
the city. Jestocost felt himself
staring at the casual milkiness
with unwanted concentration.

The Bell cleared.

It showed the vague image of
a room in which children were
playing Hallowe’en tricks.

The Lady Johanna laughed,
“Those aren’t people. They’re ro-
bots. It’s just a dull old play.”
“Then,” added C’mell, “he
wanted a dollar and a shilling to
take home. Real ones. There was
a robot who had found some.”
“What are those?” said Lord
Issan.

“Ancient money — the real

24

GALAXY

THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL

25

money of old America and old
Australia,” cried Lord William.
“I have copies, but there are no
originals outside the state muse-
um.” He was an ardent, passionate
collector of coins.

“The robot found them in an
old hiding place right under
Earth port.”

T ORD William almost shouted
at the Bell. “Run through
every hiding place and get me
that money.”

The Bell clouded. In finding
the bad neighborhoods it had
flashed every police point in the
Northwest sector of the tower.
Now it scanned all the police
points under the tower, and ran
dizzily through thousands of com-
binations before it settled on an
old toolroom. A robot was polish-
ing circular pieces of metal.

When Lord William saw the
polishing, he was furious. “Get
that here,” he shouted. “I want
to buy those myself!”

“All right,” said Lord Issan. “It’s
a little irregular, but all right.”
The machine showed the key
search devices and brought the
robot to the escalator.

The Lord Issan said, “This isn’t
much of a case.”

C’mell sniveled. She was a good
actress. “Then he wanted me to
get a homunculus egg. One of the
E-type, derived from birds, for
him to take home.”

Issan put on the search device.
“Maybe,” said C’mell, “some-
body has already put it in the
disposal series.”

The Bell and the Bank ran
through all the disposal devices
at high speed. Jestocost felt his
nerves go on edge. No human be-
ing could have memorized these
thousands of patterns as they
flashed across the Bell too fast
for human eyes, but the brain
reading the Bell through his eyes
was not human. It might even be
locked into a computer of its
own. It was, thought Jestocost, an
indignity for a Lord of the In-
strumentality to be used as a
human spy-glass.

The machine blotted up.
“You’re a fraud,” cried the Lord
Issan. “There’s no evidence.”
“Maybe the offworlder tried,”
said the Lady Johanna.

“Shadow him,” said Lord Wil-
liam. “If he would steal ancient
coins he would steal anything.”
The Lady Johanna turned to
C’mell. “You’re a silly thing. You
have wasted our time and you
have kept us from serious inter-
world business.”

“It is inter-world business,”
wept C’mell. She let her hand slip
from Jestocost’s shoulder, where
it had rested all the time. The
body-to-body relay broke and the
telepathic link broke with it.

“We should judge that,” said
Lord Issan.

26

GALAXY

“You might have been pun-
ished,” said Lady Johanna.

The Lord Jestocost had said
nothing, but there was a glow of
happiness in him. If the E-telekeli
was half as good as he seemed,
the underpeople had a list of
checkpoints and escape routes
which would make it easier to
hide from the capricious sentence
of painless death which human
authorities meted out.

V

T HERE was singing in the cor-
ridors that night.

Underpeople burst into happi-
ness for no visible reason.

C’mell danced a wild cat dance
for the next customer who came
in from outworld stations, that
very evening. When she got home
to bed, she knelt before the pic-
ture of her father C’mackintosh
and thanked the E-telekeli for
what Jestocost had done.

But the story became known
a few generations later, when the
Lord Jestocost had won acclaim
for being the champion of the
underpeople and when the author-
ities, still unaware of E-telekeli,
accepted the elected representa-
tives of the underpeople as ne-
gotiators for better terms of life;
and C’mell had died long since.

She had first had a long, good
life.

She became a female chef when

she was too old to be a girly girl.
Her food was famous. Jestocost
once visited her. At the end of
the meal he had asked, “There’s
a silly rhyme among the under-
people. No human beings know it
except me.”

“I don’t care about rhymes,”
she said.

“This is called ‘The what-she-
did.’ ”

C’mell blushed all the way
down to the neckline of her ca-
pacious blouse. She had filled out
a lot in middle age. Running the
restaurant had helped.

“Oh, that rhyme!” she said. “It’s
silly.”

“It says you were in love with
a hominid.”

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t.” Her
green eyes, as beautiful as ever,
stared deeply into his. Jestocost
felt uncomfortable. This was get-
ting personal. He liked political
relationships; personal things
made him uncomfortable.

The light in the room shifted
and her cat eyes blazed at him,
she looked like the magical fire-
haired girl he had known.

“I wasn’t in love. You couldn’t
call it that . . .”

Her heart cried out, It was you,
it was you, it was you.

“But the rhyme,” insisted Jest-
ocost, “says it was a hominid. It
wasn’t that Prins van de Schemer-
ing?” /

“Who was he?” C’mell asked

THE BALLAD OF LOST C'MELL

27

the question quietly, but her
emotions cried out, Darling, will
you never, never know?

“The strong man.”

“Oh, him. I’ve forgotten him.”
Jestocost rose from the table.
“You’ve had a good life, C’mell.
You’ve been a citizen, a commit-
teewoman, a leader. And do you
even know how many children
you have had?”

“Seventy-three,” she snapped
at him. “Just because they’re mul-
tiple doesn’t mean we don’t know
them.”

His playfulness left him. His
face was grave, his voice kindly.
“I meant no harm, C’mell.”

He never knew that when he
left she went back to the kitchen
and cried for a while. It was Jest-
ocost whom she had vainly loved
ever since they had been com-
rades, many long years ago.

■ Even after she died, at the full
age of five-score and three, he
kept seeing her about the corri-
dors and shafts of Earthport.
Many of her great-granddaugh-
ters looked just like her and sev-
eral of them practised the girly-
girl business with huge success.

They were not half-slaves.
They were citizens (reserved
grade) and they had photopasses
which protected their property,
their identity and their rights.
Jestocost was the godfather to
them all; he was often embar-
rassed when the most voluptuous

creatures in the universe threw
playful kisses at him. All he asked
was fulfillment of his political
passions, not his personal ones.
He had always been in love, mad-
ly in love —

With justice itself.

A T LAST, his own time came,
and he knew that he was
dying, and he was not sorry. He
had had a wife, hundreds of years
ago, and had loved her well; their
children had passed into the gen-
erations of man.

In the ending, he wanted to
know something, and he called to
a nameless one (or to his succes-
sor) far beneath the ground. He
called with his mind till it was a
scream.

I have helped your people.
“Yes,” came back the faintest
of faraway whispers, inside his
head.

I am dying. I must know. Did
she love me?

“She went on without you, so
much did she love you. She let
you go, for your sake, not for hers.
She really loved you. More than
death. More than life. More than
time. You will never be apart.”
Never apart?

“Not, not in the memory of
man,” said the voice, and was then
still.

Jestocost lay back on his pillow
and waited for the day to end.

— CORDWAINER SMITH

28

GALAXY

Boys! You can raise Giant Mushrooms in your cellar

and that's by no means all!

By RAY BRADBURY

GOME

INTO
MY CELLAR

^ ^H FORTNUM woke to
Saturday’s commotions, and
lay eyes shut, savoring each in its
turn.

Below, bacon in a skillet; Cyn-
thia waking him with fine cook-
ings instead of cries.

Across the hall, Tom actually
taking a shower.

Far off in the bumble-bee
dragon-fly light, whose voice was
already damning the weather,
the time, and the tides? Mrs.
Goodbody? Yes. That Christian
giantess, six foot tall with her
shoes off, the gardener extraor-
dinary, the octogenarian-dietitian
and town philosopher.

He rose, unhooked the screen

and leaned out to hear her cry:

“There! Take that! This’ll fix
you! Hah!”

“Happy Saturday, Mrs. Good-
body!”

The old woman froze in clouds
of bug-spray pumped from an
immense gun.

“Nonsense!” she shouted. “With
these fiends and pests to watch
for?”

“What kind this time?” called
Fortnum.

“I don’t want to shout it to the
jaybirds, but — ” she glanced sus-
piciously around — “what would
you say if I told you I was the
first line of defense concerning
Flying Saucers?”

COME INTO MY CELLAR

29

“Fine,” replied Fortnum.
“There’ll be rockets between the
worlds any year now.”

“There already are!” She
pumped, aiming the spray under
the hedge. “There! Take that!”

He pulled his head back in
from the fresh day, somehow not
as high-spirited as his first re-
sponse had indicated. Poor soul,
Mrs. Goodbody. Always the very
essence of reason. And now what?
Old age?

The doorbell rang.

TTE GRABBED his robe and
was half down the stairs
when he heard a voice say,
“Special Delivery. Fortnum?”
and saw Cynthia turn from the
front door, a small packet in her
hand.

He put his hand out, but she
shook her head.

“Special Delivery Air-Mail for
your son.”

Tom was downstairs like a
centipede.

“Wow! That must be from the
Great Bayou Novelty Green-
house!”

“I wish I were as excited about
ordinary mail,” observed Fort-
num.

“Ordinary?!” Tom ripped the
cord and paper wildly. “Don’t you
read the back pages of Popular
Mechanics? Well, here they are!”

Everyone peered into the small
open box.

“Here,” said Fortnum, “what
are?”

“The Sylvan Glade Jumbo-
Giant Guaranteed Growth Raise-
Them-in-Y our - Cellar - f or - Big -
Profit Mushrooms!”

“Oh, of course,” said Fortnum.
“How silly of me.”

Cynthia squinted. “Those little
teeny bits — ?”

“Fabulous growth in 24
hours,” Tom quoted from mem-
ory. “Plant them in your own cel-
lar — ’ ”

Fortnum and wife exchanged
glances.

“Well,” she admitted, “it’s
better than frogs and green-
snakes.”

“Sure is!” Tom ran.

“Oh, Tom,” said Fortnum,
lightly.

Tom paused at the cellar
door.

“Tom,” said his father. “Next
time, fourth class mail would do
fine.”

“Heck,” said Tom. “They
must’ve made a mistake, thought
I was some rich company. Air-
mail special, who can afford
that?”

The cellar door slammed.

Fortnum, bemused, scanned
the wrapper a moment, then
dropped it into the wastebasket.
On his way to the kitchen, he
opened the cellar door.

Tom was already on his
knees, digging with a handrake

30

GALAXY

in the dirt of the back part of the
cellar.

He felt his wife beside him,
breathing softly, looking down
into the cool dimness.

“Those are mushrooms, I hope.
Not . . • toadstools?”

Fortnum laughed. “Happy har-
vest, farmer!”

Tom glanced up and waved.
Fortnum shut the door, took
his wife’s arm, and walked her
out to the kitchen, feeling fine.

T OWARD NOON, Fortnum
was driving toward the near-
est market when he saw Roger
Willis, a fellow Rotarian, and
teacher of biology at the town
high school, waving urgently
from the sidewalk.

Fortnum pulled his car up and
opened the door.

“Hi, Roger, .give you a lift?”
Willis responded all too eager-
ly, jumping in and slamming the
door.

“Just the man I want to see.
I’ve put off calling for days.
Could you play psychiatrist for
five minutes, God help you?”
Fortnum examined his friend
for a moment as he drove quiet-
ly on.

“God help you, yes. Shoot.”
Willis sat back and studied his
fingernails. “Let’s just drive a
moment. There. Okay. Here’s
what I want to say: something’s
wrong with the world.”

Fortnum laughed easily.
“Hasn’t there always been?”

“No, no, I mean . . . something
strange — something unseen —
is happening.”

“Mrs. Goodbody,” said Fort-
num, half to himself, and stop-
ped.

“Mrs. Goodbody?”

“This morning. Gave me a
talk on flying saucers.”

“No,” Willis bit the knuckle of
his forefinger nervously. “Noth-
ing like saucers. At least I don’t
think. Tell me, what is intuition?”
“The conscious recognition of
something that’s been subcon-
scious for a long time. But don’t
quote this amateur psycholo-
gist!” He laughed again.

“Good, good!” Willis turned,
his face lighting. He readjusted
himself in the seat. “That’s it!
Over a long period, things gather,
right? All of a sudden, you have
to spit, but you don’t remember
saliva collecting. Your hands are
dirty, but you don’t know how
they got that way. Dust falls on
you every day and you don’t feel
it. But when you get enough dust
collected up, there it is, you see
and name it. That’s intuition, as
far as I’m concerned. Well, what
kind of dust has been falling on
me? A few meteors in the sky at
night? Funny weather just before
dawn? I don’t know. Certain
colors, smells, the way the house
creaks at three in the morning?

COME INTO MY CELLAR

I

31

Hair prickling on my arms? All
I know is, the damn dust has
collected. Quite suddenly I
know.”

“Yes,” said Fortnum, disquiet-
ed. “But what is it you know?”

Willis looked at his hands in
his lap.

“I’m afraid. I’m not afraid.
Then I’m afraid again, in the
middle of the day. Doctor’s
checked me. I’m A-l. No family
problems. Joe’s a fine boy, a
good son. Dorothy? She’s re-
markable. With her, I’m not a-
fraid of growing old or dying.”

“Lucky man.”

“But beyond my luck now.
Scared stiff, really, for myself,
my family; even, right now, for
you.”

“Me?” said Fortnum.

HTHEY had stopped now by an
empty lot near the market.
There was a moment of great
stillness, in which Fortnum turn-
ed to survey his friend. Willis’
voice had suddenly made him
cold.

“I’m afraid for everybody,”
said Willis. “Your friends, mine,
and their friends, on out of sight.
Pretty silly, eh?”

Willis opened the door, got out
and peered in at Fortnum.
Fortnum felt he had to speak.

“Well — what do we do about
it?”

Willis looked up at the sun

burning blind in the great, re-
mote sky.

“Be aware,” he said, slowly.
“Watch everything for a few
days.”

“Everything?”

“We don’t use half what God
gave us, ten per cent of the time.
We ought to hear more, feel
more, smell more, taste more.
Maybe there’s something wrong
with the way the wind blows
these weeds there in the lot. May-
be it’s the sun up on those tele-
phone wires or the cicadas sing-
ing in the elm trees. If only we
could stop, look, listen, a few
days, a few nights, and compare
notes. Tell me to shut up then,
and I will.”

“Good enough,” said Fortnum,
playing it lighter then he felt.
“I’ll look around. But how do I
know the thing I’m looking for
when I see it?”

Willis peered in at him sin-
cerely. “You’ll know. You’ve got
to know. Or we’re done for, all of
us,” he said quietly.

Fortnum shut the door, and
didn’t know what to say. He felt
a flush of embarrassment creep-
ing up his face. Willis sensed
this.

“Hugh, do you think I’m —
off my rocker?”

“Nonsense!” said Fortnum, too
quickly. “You’re just nervous, is
all. You should take a couple of
weeks off.”

32

GALAXY

Willis nodded. “See you Mon-
day night?”

“Any time. Drop around.”

“I hope I will, Hugh. I really
hope I will.

Then Willis was gone, hurry-
ing across the dry weed-grown
lot, toward the side entrance of
the market.

Watching him go, Willis sud-
denly did not want to move. He
discovered that very slowly he
was taking deep breaths, weigh-
ing the silence. He licked his lips,
tasting the salt. He looked at his
arm on the door-sill, the sun-
light burning the golden hairs.
In the empty lot the wind moved
all alone to itself. He leaned out
to look at the sun which stared
back with one massive stunning
blow of intense power that made
him jerk his head in.

He exhaled. Then he laughed
out loud. Then he drove away.

I'T'HE lemonade glass was cool
and deliciously sweaty. The
ice made music inside the glass,
and the lemonade was just sour
enough, just sweet enough on his
tongue. He sipped, he savored, he
tilted back in the wicker rocking
chair on the twilight front porch,
his eyes closed. The crickets
were Ghirping out on the lawn.
Cynthia, knitting across from him
on the porch, eyed him curious-
ly. He could feel the pressure of
her attention.

“What are you up to?” she
said at last.

“Cynthia,” he said, “is your in-
tuition in running order? Is this
earthquake weather? Is the land
going to sink? Will war be de-
clared? Or is it only that our del-
phinium will die of the blight?”

“Hold on. Let me feel my
bones.” '

He opened his eyes and
watched Cynthia in turn clos-
ing hers and sitting absolutely
statue-still, her hands on her
knees. Finally she shook her
head and smiled.

“No. No war declared. No land
sinking. Not even a blight. Why?”

“I’ve met a lot of Doom
Talkers today. Well, two, any-
way, and — ”

The screen door burst wide.
Fortnum’s body jerked as if he
had been struck. “What!”

Tom, a gardener’s wooden flat
in his arms, stepped out on the
porch.

“Sorry,” he said. “What’s
wrong, dad?”

“Nothing.” Fortnum stood up,
glad to be moving. “Is that the
crop?”

Tom moved foreward, eagerly.
“Part of it. Boy, they’re doing
great. In just seven hours, with
lots of water, look how big the
darn things are!” He set the flat
on the table between his parents.

The crop was indeed plentiful.
Hundreds of small grayish brown

COME INTO MY CELLAR

33

mushrooms were sprouting up in
the damp soil.

“I’ll be damned,” said Fort-
num, impressed.

Cynthia put out her hand to
touch the flat, then took it away
uneasily.

“I hate to be a spoilsport, but
. . . there’s no way for these to be
anything else but mushrooms, is
there?”

Tom looked as if he had been
insulted. “What do you think
I’m going to feed you? Poison
fungoids?”

“That’s just it,” said Cynthia
quickly. “How do you tell them
apart?”

“Eat ’em,” said Tom. “If you
live, they’re mushrooms. If you
drop dead — well!”

He gave a great guffaw, which
amused Fortnum, but only made
his mother wince. She sat back
in her chair.

“I — I don’t like them,” she
said.

“Boy, oh, boy.” Tom seized the
flat angrily. “When are we going
to have the next Wet Blanket
Sale in this house!?”

He shuffled morosely away.

“Tom — ” said Fortnum.

“Never mind,” said Tom.
“Everyone figures they’ll be ruin-
ed by the boy entrepeneur. To
heck with it!”

Fortnum got inside just as
Tom heaved the mushrooms,
flat and all, down the cellar

34

stairs. He slammed the cellar !
door and ran angrily out the back
door.

Fortnum turned back to his
wife, who, stricken, glanced away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t
know why. I just had to say that j
to Tom.”

The phone rang. Fortnum
brought the phone outside on its 1
extension cord.

“Hugh?” It was Dorothy (
Willis’ voice. She sounded sud- j
denly very old and very frighten-
ed. “Hugh . . . Roger isn’t there, |
is he?”

“Dorothy? No.”

“He’s gone!” said Dorothy.
“All his clothes were taken from
the closet.” She began to cry
softly.

“Dorothy, hold on, I’ll be I
there in a minute.”

“You must help, oh, you must.
Something’s happened to him, I
know it,” she wailed. “Unless you I
do something, we’ll never see him
alive again.”

Very slowly, he put the re-
ceiver back on its hook, her voice
weeping inside it. The night
crickets, quite suddenly, were
very loud. He felt the hairs, one
by one, go up on the back of his I
neck.

Hair can’t do that, he thought.
Silly, silly. It can’t do that, not
in real life, it can’t!

But, one by slow prickling one,
his hair did.

GALAXY

-

T HE wire hangers were indeed
empty. With a clatter, Fort-
num shoved them aside and
down along the rod, then turned
and looked out of the closet at
Dorothy Willis and her son Joe.

“I was just walking by,” said
Joe, “and saw the closet empty,
all Dad’s clothes gone!”

“Everything was fine,” said
Dorothy. “We’ve had a wonder-
ful life- I don’t understand it, I
don’t, I don’t!” She began to cry
again, putting her hands to her
face.

Fortnum stepped out of the
closet.

“You didn’t hear him leave the
house?”

“We were playing catch out
front,” said Joe. “Dad said he had
to go in for a minute. I went a-
round back. Then — he was
gone!”

“He must have packed quick-
ly and walked wherever he was
going, so we wouldn’t hear a cab
pull up in front of the house.”
They were moving out through
the hall now.

“I’ll check the train depot and
the airport.” Fortnum hesitated.
“Dorothy, is there anything in
Roger’s background — ”

“It wasn’t insanity took him.”
She hesitated. “I feel — some-
how — he was kidnapped.”
Fortnum shook his head. “It
doesn’t seem reasonable he would
arrange to pack, walk out of the

house and go meet his alfr
ductors.”

Dorothy opened the door as if
to let the night or the night wind
move down the hall as she turn-
ed to stare back through the
rooms, her voice wandering.

“No. Somehow they came into
the house. Right in front of us,
they stole him away.”

And then:

“. . . a terrible thing has hap-
pened.”

Fortnum stepped out into
the night of crickets and rustling
trees. The Doom Talkers, he
thought, talking their Dooms.
Mrs. Goodbody. Roger. And now
Roger’s wife. Something terri-
ble has happened. But what, in
God’s name? And how?

He looked from Dorothy to
her son. Joe, blinking the wetness
from his eyes, took a long time
to turn, walk along the hall and
stop, fingering the knob of the
cellar door.

Fortnum felt his eyelids
twitch, his iris flex, as if he were
snapping a picture of something
he wanted to remember.

Joe pulled the cellar door
wide, stepped down out of sight,
gone. The door tapped shut.

Fortnum opened his mouth to
speak, but Dorothy’s hand was
taking his now, he had to look
at her.

“Please,” she said. “Find him
for me.”

COME INTO MY CELLAR

35

He kissed her cheek. “If it’s
humanly possible . . ”

If it’s humanly possible. Good
Lord, why had he picked those
words?

He walked off into the summer
night.

A GASP, an exhalation, a gasp,
J -*-an exhalation, an asthmatic
insuck, a vaporing sneeze. Some-
one dying in the dark? No.

Just Mrs. Goodbody, unseen
beyond the hedge, working late,
her hand-pump aimed, her bony
elbow thrusting. The sick-sweet
smell of bug-spray enveloped
Fortnum heavily as he reached
his house.

“Mrs. Goodbody? Still at it?!”

From the black hedge, her
voice leapt:

“Damn it, yes! Aphids, water-
bugs, woodworms and now the
marasmius oreades. Lord, it
grows fast!”

“What does?”

“The marasmius oreades, of
course! It’s me against them, and
I intend to win. There! There!
There!”

He left the hedge, the gasping
pump, the wheezing voice, and
found his wife waiting for him on
the porch almost as if she were
going to take up where Dorothy
had left off at her door a few
minutes ago.

Fortnum was about to speak,
when a shadow moved inside.

There was a creaking noise. A'
knob rattled.

Tom vanished into the base-
ment.

Fortnum felt as if someone
had set off an explosion in his
face. He reeled. Everything had
the numbed familiarity of those :
waking dreams where all motions j
are remembered before they oc- j
cur, all dialogue known before it j
fell from the lips.

He found himself staring at ’
the shut basement door. Cynthia !
took him inside, amused

“What? Tom? Oh, I relented. I
The darn mushrooms meant so I
much to him. Besides, when he i
threw them into the cellar, they I
did nicely, just lying in the dirt.”
“Did they?” Fortnum heard '
himself say.

Cynthiq, took his arm. “What
about Roger?”

“He’s gone, yes.”

“Men, men, men,” she said.

“No, you’re wrong,” he said. “I 1
saw Roger every day for the last
ten years. When you know a man '
that well, you can tell how things
are at home, whether things are j
in the oven or the mixmaster. i
Death hadn’t breathed down his l
neck yet. He wasn’t running
scared after his immortal youth,
picking peaches in someone else’s
orchards. No, no, I swear, I’d bet
my last dollar on it, Roger — ”
The doorbell rang behind him. j
The delivery boy had come up

I

GALAXY

36

quietly onto the porch and was
standing there with a telegram
in his hand.

“Fortnum?”

Cynthia snapped on the hall
light as he ripped the envelope
open and smoothed it out for
reading.

“TRAVELING NEW OR-
LEANS. THIS TELEGRAM
POSSIBLE OFF-GUARD MO-
MENT. YOU MUST REFUSE,
REPEAT REFUSE, ALL
SPECIAL DELIVERY PACK-
AGES! ROGER.”

Cynthia glanced up from the
paper.

“I don’t understand. What
does he mean?”

But Fortnum was already at
the telephone, dialing swiftly,
once. “Operator? The police, and
hurry!”

A T ten-fifteen that night, the
phone rang for the sixth time
during the evening. Fortnum got
it, and immediately gasped.
“Roger! Where are you?!”

“Where am I, hell,” said Roger
lightly, almost amused. “You
know very well where I am.
You’re responsible for this. I
should be angry!”

Cynthia, at his nod, had hur-
ried to take the extension phone
in the kitchen. When he heard
the soft click, he went on.

“Roger, I swear I don’t know.

I got that telegram from you — ”

“What telegram?” said Roger,
jovially. “I sent no telegram.
Now, of a sudden, the police
come pouring onto the south-
bound train, pull me off in some
jerkwater, and I’m calling you to
get them off my neck. Hugh, if
this is some joke — ”

“But, Roger, you just vanish-
ed!”

“On a business trip. If you
can call that vanishing. I told
Dorothy about this, and Joe.”
“This is all very confusing,
Roger. You’re in no danger? No-
body’s blackmailing you, forc-
ing you into this speech?”

“I’m fine, healthy, free and un-
afraid.”

“But, Roger, your premoni-
tions . . . ?”

“Poppycock! Now, look, I’m
being very good about this,
aren’t I?”

“Sure, Roger.”

“Then play the good father
and give me permission to go.
Call Dorothy and tell her I’ll be
back in five days. How could she
have forgotten?”

“She did, Roger. See you in
five days, then?” ‘

“Five days, I swear.”

The voice was indeed winning
and warm, the old Roger again.
Fortnum shook his head, more
bewildered than before.

“Roger,” he said, “this is the
craziest day I’ve ever spent.
You’re not running off from

COME INTO MY CELLAR

37

Dorothy? Good Lord, you can
tell me.”

“I love her with all my heart.
Now, here’s Lieutenant Parker of
the Ridgetown police. Good-by,
Hugh.”

“Good — ”

But the lieutenant was on the
line, talking angrily. What had
Fortnum meant putting them to
this trouble? What was going on?
Who did he think he was? Did or
didn’t he want this so-called
friend Lfcld or released?

“Released,” Fortnum managed
to say somewhere along the way,
and hung up the phone and im-
agined he heard a voice call all a-
board and the massive thunder
of the train leaving the station
two hundred miles south in the
somehow increasingly dark night.

/^YNTHIA walked very slowly
^ into the parlor.

“I feel so foolish,” she said.
“How do think I feel?”

‘Who could have sent that tele-
gram? And why?”

He poured himself some scotch
and stood in the middle of the
room looking at it.

“I’m glad Roger is all right,”
his wife said, at last.

“He isn’t,” said Fortnum.

“But you just said — ”

“I said nothing. After all, we
couldn’t very well drag him off
that train and truss him up and
send him home, could we, if he

38

insisted he was okay? No. He
sent that telegram, but he
changed his mind after sending it.
Why, why, why?” Fortnum paced
the room, sipping the drink. ‘Why
warn us against special delivery
packages? The only package
we’ve got this year which fits that
description is the one Tom got
this morning — ” His voice trailed
off.

Before he could move, Cynthia
was at the wastepaper basket
taking out the crumpled wrap-
ping paper with the special-de-
livery stamps on it.

The postmark read: NEW

ORLEANS, LA.

Cynthia looked up from it.
“New Orleans. Isn’t that where
Roger is heading right now?”

A doorknob rattled, a door
opened and closed in Fortnum’s
mind. Another doorknob rattled,
another door swung wide and
then shut. There was a smell of
damp earth.

He found his hand dialing the
phone. After a long while, Dor-
othy Willis answered at the other
end. He could imagine her sitting
alone in a house with too many
lights on. He talked quietly with
her awhile, then cleared his
throat and said, “Dorothy, look.
I know it sounds silly. Did any
special delivery airmail packages
arrive at your house the last few
days?”

Her voice was faint. “No.”
GALAXY

Then: “No, wait. Three days ago.
But I thought you knew! All the
boys on the block are going in
for it.”

Fortnum measured his words
carefully.

“Going in for what?”

“But why ask?” she said.
“There’s nothing wrong with
raising mushrooms, is there?”
Fortnum closed his eyes.
“Hugh? Are you still there?”
asked Dorothy. “I said: there’s
nothing wrong with — ”

“ — raising mushrooms?” said
Fortnum, at last. “No. Nothing
wrong. Nothing wrong.”

And slowly he put down the
phone.

The curtains blew like veils of
moonlight. The clock ticked. The
after-midnight world flowed into
and filled the bedroom. He heard
Mrs. Goodbody’s clear voice on
this morning’s air, a million years
gone now. He heard Roger put-
ting a cloud over the sun at noon.
He heard the police damning him
by phone from downstate. Then
Roger’s voice again, with the lo-
comotive thunder hurrying him
away and away, fading. And fi-
nally, Mrs. Goodbody’s voice be-
hind the hedge:

“Lord, it grows fast!”

“What does?”

“Marasmium oreades!”

He snapped his eyes open. He
sat up.

Downstairs, a moment later, he

flicked through the unabridged
dictionary.

His forefinger underlined the
words:

“Marasmius oreades: a mush-
room commonly found on lawns
in summer and early autumn.”
He let the book fall shut.

/"kUTSIDE, in the deep summer
night, he lit a cigarette and
smoked quietly.

A meteor fell across space,
burning itself out quickly. The
trees rustled softly.

The front door tapped shut.
Cynthia moved toward him in
her robe.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Too warm, I guess.”

“It’s not warm.”

“No,” he said, feeling his arms.
“In fact, it’s cold.” He sucked on
the cigarette twice, then, not
looking at her, said, “Cynthia . . .
What if . . . ?” He snorted and
had to stop. “Well, what if Roger
was right this morning? Mrs.
Goodbody, what if she’s right,
too? Something terrible is hap-
pening. Like — well — ” he nodded
at the sky and the million stars
— “Earth being invaded by
things from other worlds, may-
be.”

“Hugh!”

“No, let me run wild.”

“It’s quite obvious we’re not-
being invaded or we’d notice.”
“Let’s say we’ve only half-

COME INTO MY CELLAR

39

noticed, become uneasy about
something. What? How could we
be invaded? By what means
would creatures invade?”

Cynthia looked at the sky and
was about to try something when
he interrupted.

“No, not meteors or flying
saucers. Not things we can see.
What about bacteria? That comes
from outer space, too, doesn’t it?”

“I read once, yes — ”

“Spores, seeds, pollens, viruses
probably bombard our atmos-
phere by the billions every second
and have done so for millions of
years. Right now we’re sitting out
under an invisible rain. It falls
all over the country, the cities,
the towns, and right now . . . our
lawn.”

“ Out lawn?”

“And Mrs. Goodbody’s. But
people like her are always pulling
weeds, spraying poison, kicking
toadstools off their grass. It
would be hard for any strange life
form to survive in cities. Weath-
er’s a problem, too. Best climate
might be South: Alabama, Geor-
gia, Louisiana. Back in the damp
bayous, they could grow to a fine
size.”

But Cynthia was beginning to
laugh now.

“Oh, really, you don’t believe,
do you, that this Great Bayou or
Whatever Greenhouse Novelty
Company that sent Tom his
package is owned and operated

by six foot tall mushrooms from
another planet?”

“If you put it that way, it
sounds funny,” he admitted.

“Funny! It’s hilarious!” She
threw her head back deliciously.

66/^OOD grief!” he cried, sud-
denly irritated. “Some-
thing’s going on! Mrs. Goodbody
is rooting out and killing maras-
mium oreades. What is maras-
mium oreades? A certain kind of
mushroom. Simultaneously, and
I suppose you’ll call it coinci-
dence, by special delivery, what
arrives the same day? Mush-
rooms for Tom! What else hap-
pens? Roger fears he may soon
cease to be! Within hours, he
vanishes, then telegraphs us,
warning us not to accept what?
The special-delivery mushrooms
for Tom! Has Roger’s son got a
similar package in the last few
days? He has! Where do the
packages come from? New Or-
leans! And where is Roger going
when he vanishes? New Orleans!
Do you see, Cynthia, do you see?
I wouldn’t be upset if all these
separate things didn’t lock to-
gether! Roger, Tom, Joe, mush-
rooms, Mrs. Goodbody, packages,
destinations, everything in one
pattern!”

She was watching his face now,
quieter, but still amused. “Don’t
get angry.”

“I’m not!” Fortnum almost

40

GALAXY

shouted. And then he simply
could not go on. He was afraid
that if he did, he would find him-
self shouting with laughter, too,
and somehow he did not want
that. He stared at the surround-
ing houses up and down the block
and thought of the dark cellars
and the neighbor boys who read
Popular Mechanics and sent
their money in by the millions to
raise the mushrooms hidden
away. Just as he, when a boy,
had mailed off for chemicals,
seeds, turtles, numberless salves
and sickish ointments. In how
many million American homes to-
night were billions of mushrooms
rousing up under the ministrations
of the innocent?

“Hugh?” His wife was touching
his arm now. “Mushrooms, even
big ones, can’t think. They can’t
move. They don’t have arms and
legs. How could they run a mail-
order service and ‘take over’ the
world? Come on, now. Let’s look
at your terrible fiends and mon-
sters!”

She pulled him toward the
door. Inside, she headed for the
cellar, but he stopped, shaking his
head, a foolish smile shaping it-
self somehow to his mouth. “No,
no, I know what we’ll find. You
win. The whole thing’s silly.
Roger will be back next week
and we’ll all get drunk together.
Go on up to bed now and I’ll
drink a glass of warm milk and be

with you in a minute . . . well, a
couple of minutes . . .”

“That’s better!” She kissed him
on both cheeks, squeezed him and
went away up the stairs.

In the kitchen, he took out a
glass, opened the refrigerator and
was pouring the milk when he
stopped suddenly.

Near the front of the top shelf
was a small yellow dish. It was
not the dish that held his at-
tention, however. It was what lay
in the dish.

The fresh-cut mushrooms.

TTE MUST have stood there
for half a minute, his breath
frosting the refrigerated air, be-
fore he reached out, took hold of
the dish, sniffed it, felt the mush-
rooms, then at last, carrying the
dish, went out into the hall. He
looked up the stairs, hearing Cyn-
thia moving about in the bed-
room, and was about to call up
to her, “Cynthia, did you put
these in the refrigerator!?”

Then he stopped. He knew her
answer. She had not.

He put the dish of mushrooms
on the newel-upright at the bot-
tom of the stairs and stood look-
ing at them. He imagined himself,
in bed later, looking at the walls,
the open windows, watching the
moonlight sift patterns on the
ceiling. He heard himself saying,
Cynthia? And her answering, yes?
And him saying, there is a way

COME INTO MY CELLAR

41

for mushrooms to grow arms and
legs . . . What? she would say,
silly, silly man, what? And he
would gather courage against her
hilarious reaction and go on, what
if a man wandered through the
swamp picked the mushrooms,
and ate them . . . ?

No response from Cynthia.

Once inside the man, would
the mushrooms spread through
his blood, take over every cell,
and change the man from a man
to a — Martian? Given this
theory, would the mushroom need
its own arms and legs? No, not
when it could borrow people, live
inside and become them. Roger
ate mushrooms given him by his
son. Roger became “something
else.” He kidnaped himself. And
in one last flash of sanity, of be-
ing “himself” he telegraphed us,
warning us not to accept the
special-delivery mushrooms. The
“Roger” that telephoned later was
no longer Roger but a captive of
what he had eaten! Doesn’t that
figure, Cynthia? Doesn’t it, does-
n’t it?

No, said the imagined Cynthia,
no, it doesn’t figure, no, no, no . . .

There was the faintest whisper,
rustle, stir from the cellar. Taking
his eyes from the bowl, Fortnum
walked to the cellar door and put
his ear to it.

“Tom?”

No answer.

“Tom, are you down there?”

No answer.

“Tom?”

After a long while, Tom’s voice
came up from below.

“Yes, Dad?”

“It’s after midnight,” said Fort-
num, fighting to keep his voice
from going high. “What are you
doing down there?”

No answer.

“I said — ”

“Tending to my crop,” said the
boy at last, his voice cold and
faint.

“Well, get the hell out of there!
You hear me!?”

Silence.

“Tom? Listen! Did you put
some mushrooms in the refriger-
ator tonight? If so, why?”

Ten seconds must have ticked
by before the boy replied from
below. “For you and Mom to eat,
of course.”

Fortnum heard his heart mov-
ing swiftly, and had to take three
deep breaths before he could go
on.

“Tom? You didn’t . . . that is
. . . you haven’t by any chance
eaten some of the mushroom
yourself, have you?”

“Funny you ask that,” said
Tom. “Yes. Tonight. On a sand-
wich after supper. Why?”

P'ORTNUM held to the door-
A knob. Now it was his turn
not to answer. He felt his knees
beginning to melt and he fought

42

GALAXY

t he whole silly senseless fool
thing- No reason, he tried to say,
but his lips wouldn’t move.

“Dad?” called Tom softly from
the cellar. “Come on down.” An-
other pause. “I want you to see
the harvest.”

Fortnum felt the knob slip in
his sweaty hand. The knob rat-
tled. He gasped. *

“Dad?” called Tom softly.

Fortnum opened the door.

The cellar was completely
black below.

He stretched his hand in toward
the light switch. As if sensing
this intrusion, from somewhere
Tom said:

“Don’t. Light’s bad for the
mushrooms.”

Fortnum took his hand off the
switch.

He swallowed. He looked back
at the stair leading up to his wife.
I suppose, he thought, I should
go say good-by to Cynthia. But
why should I think that! Why
should I think that at all? No
reason, is there?

None.

“Tom?” he said, affecting a
jaunty air. “Ready or not, here
I come!”

And stepping down in dark-
ness, he shut the door.

— RAY BRADBURY

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN'S

Starting in November

IF •SCIENCE FICTION

great NEW serial

*

PODKAYNE OF MARS
DON’T MISS IT

THE

EARTHM
BURDEN

Mighty Earth was master of all the
stars. Trouble was — nobody had
told some of the inhabited worlds l

By DONALD E. WESTLAKE

Illustrated by TEMPLETON

H elmut glorring,

Commander-in-Chief of
the TSS(E&D) Law-
rence, Vice-Marshal in the Impe-
rial Fleet, Primate Representa-
tive of the Empire of Earth and
the Protectorate, D.A.S. (Hon.),
D.I.L. (Hon.), D.Lib.A. (Hon.),
smiled and took the hand of
Marine Captain Rink. He then
turned, twisted, lifted and hurled
Captain Rink over his head and
into the wall.

44

The captain screamed, and
when he rolled away from the
wall his left arm was twisted.

The assembled officers dutiful-
ly cheered, beating their palms
together. Glorring grinned and
nodded, flexing his muscles as his
two dressers hurried forward with
towels and patted him dry. Rink,
weaving a bit, got to his feet and
staggered away to the infirmary.

“Still the best,” muttered Glor-
ring in satisfaction.

The dressers chorused, “Yes,
sir!”

Still the best, he thought. The
shape he was in, he could even
take the Triumvirate, one at a
time. But he knew better than to
voice that thought aloud. He still
wasn’t sure which of his officers
was the Loyalty Sneak.

As the last of them trailed out
of the gym, headed for their du-
ties in other parts of the ship,
Chief Astrogator Koll came in,
trailed by SSS Citizen Ehlen-
burgh. “Sir,” said Koll, jabbing a
thumb at Ehlenburgh, “the Scien-
tist here says we’re passing near a
Sol-star. He says the charts don’t
list it, and it might have planets.”

LORRING frowned. The
Lawrence had been out from
Earth over three years now.
Seven Lost Colonies had been
found and brought — forcibly, un-
fortunately but unavoidably —
back into the fold. And Glorring

46

had more or less decided to skip
this time the token search for a
habitable yet uninhabited planet
which was, in the popular mind
at home, the primary purpose for
the Fleet.

He was anxious to return to
Earth — it wasn’t politically safe
to be too long away.

He turned to the Scientist.
“How good are the chances?” he
demanded.

Ehlenburgh, a narrow elderly
man in SSS gray, shrugged bony
shoulders. “You can never tell.
The star is of the right type, but
in FTL it’s impossible to measure i
anything as small as planetary
mass. Statistically, our chances
are good. On the other hand, there
are such stars Without planets, or
without planets on which humans
can live. This may be one.”

“In other words,” said Glorring,
“you won’t make a definite state-
ment one way or the other.”

“I can’t,” Ehlenburgh told him. j
“Not in FTL.”

“If we’re going to stop,” said •
Astrogator Koll, “we’ll have to do
it within ten minutes, Excellency.”

A commander must make his
decisions rapidly and confidently.
“We’ll stop,” said Glorring. With-
out turning around, he barked,
“Strull!”

Captain Strull, adjutant, hur-
ried forward and bowed. “Excel-
lency.”

“Staff in the Ready Room in
GALAXY i

ten minutes,” Glorring told him.

“Very good, Excellency.” Strull
bowed again and turned toward
the door.

“Strull!”

The adjutant stopped, looking
apprehensively at Glorring. “Ex-
cellency?”

Glorring studied the adjutant
a long silent moment, raking him
with his eyes. Strull was short,
broad-framed, naturally prone to
overweight. He had grown lax re-
cently — was probably avoiding
the exercise sessions in the gym

and certainly hadn’t engaged in

any wrestling matches for months
now. His potential for fat had be-
come kinetic. Strull bulged within
his scarlet uniform, and his chin
had multiplied.

His voice deceptively soft,
Glorring purred, “Just how much
do you weigh, Strull, if you
please?”

“Excellency,” quavered Strull,
“one hundred ninety pounds. If
your Excellency pleases.”

“You’re tat!” barked Glorring.
“The men of the Fleet must be
lean! Must be hard! Could you
wrestle me, Strull, one bone-
break?”

“Oh, no, Excellency,” said
Strull fearfully. “You are much
stronger than I, Excellency.”

“You have seven days to weigh
one-sixty,” Glorring told him, “or
I’ll have the excess carved from
you and served to the enlisted

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDE

men for breakfast. Do I make
myself clear?”

“Quite clear, Excellency,” said
Strull miserably. “Seven days,
Excellency.”

“I’ll be out for the briefing in
ten minutes,” said Glorring. “I’ll
want the staff ready.”

“Yes, Excellency. Ten minutes,
Excellency.”

Strull bowed again, more deep-
ly than before, and, maintaining
the bow, backed out of the room.

Glorring nodded in satisfaction
and turned away, in search of a
mirror.

At decreasing multiples of the
speed of light, the Lawrence ap-
proached the Sol-star. On block
one, in the most forward section
of the ship, Glorring preened be-
fore his mirror while the mutter-
ing and helplessly indignant
Strull padded about, rounding up
the staff. On block four, the six
gray-garbed members of the SSS
— Scientific Survey Staff —
checked their equipment and pre-
pared for observation and meas-
urement, or at least five of them
did so. One, the psysociohistorian,
named Cahann, had nothing to do
in this situation. His field was
human groupings, not the physi-
cal universe of stars and planets.
So Cahann, a thin and bitter man,
sat morosely in his cubicle and
thought his seditious thoughts.
Below, on block six, the Marines
made fast, preparing for the tran-

N 47

sition to normal speed. Among
them was a twenty-year-old
Spaceman Third named Elan, in-
distinguishable from the rest.

C AHANN hated the transitions
to and from FTL. The mo-
mentary feeling of bodilessness
always upset him, irrationally
frightening him, as though he
were afraid each time that he
wouldn’t come back together
again.

It happened as usual this time.
Cahann, swallowing repeatedly
and trying to ignore his nausea,
reached for a book — any book —
and tried to read. The other five
Scientists, he knew, would be on
their way up to the Ready Room
now with their preliminary re-
ports. He could go up with them
and hear the news. But he was
completely disinterested. This
was not a Lost Colony for which
they were stopping, and he was
just as pleased.

He enjoyed his work. But he
hated its consequences.

He longed for his pipe. Most of
the time, he could get along some-
how without it, but when faced
with speed transition he sorely
missed its warm comfort.

Well, he reflected, at least this
was an unpopulated system, and
he could have no false hopes
dashed by a weakling Colony.
One would think, he told himself
for the thousandth time, that at

least one of the Lost Colonies
would have advanced to the point
where it could stand up to the
Empire and defend itself. But it
just didn’t work out that way.

True, Earth had fallen back
from the Old Empire into the bar-
barism of the Dark Ages; but the
records had still been there, wait-
ing for men to be ready to use
them again. And the colonies, at
the time of the collapse of the Old
Empire, had been small units, de-
pendent on Earth for most of
their technological knowledge
and materiel. Only tiny areas of
their worlds were tamed. In the
time that Earth had rebuilt her
Empire, the colonies had had to
devote themselves to maintaining
the shaky status quo on alien and
often dangerous worlds, progres-
sing only slowly.

A brisk rap at the cubicle door
was immediately followed by the
head of Strull, saying, “His Excel-
lency wants you in the Ready
Room. At once.”

Cahann looked up. “What for?”
“Don’t question his Excellen-
cy,” snapped Strull.

“I’m not. I’m questioning you.”
“And I’m not answering,” Strull
told him triumphantly, and
marched away down the corridor.

Cahann surged out of his chair,
knowing exactly what Strull in-
tended to do next. He raced down
the corridor, Strull trundling
ahead of him, and managed to get

48

GALAXY

to the elevator before Strull could
close its door in his face.

Cahann grinned. “You’ll have
to take some of that tonnage off
before you can outrace me,
Strull,” he said.

The barb seemed to strike far
deeper than was warranted. Strull
got red-faced and beetle-browed
and sank into a burning silence.
Cahann shrugged.

The Ready Room was filled
with an excited buzzing. Glorring
in the savage splendor of his
golden uniform, prowled across
the room to Cahann, smirking
happily. “Good news, Cahann!”
he announced. “Not only a habit-
able planet, but populated!
There’ll be work for you. Sit
down, and we’ll start the briefing.”
He turned away, crying, “Ehlen-
burgh!”

Stunned, Cahann found a seat
in the crowded Ready Room. He
wondered if he’d heard aright. A
populated world, not on the
charts? Impossible!

Unconsciously, his hand came
up to his mouth, cupped as though
holding a pipe-bowl, as he listened
to the other Scientists describe
the world this ambulatory boil
had so unexpectedly discovered.

TT sounded a strange world in-
deed. Not physically, but in
reference to the human popula-
tion. Physically, it was nearly
ideal. It was a rather close approx-

imation of Earth. Somewhat less
of it was under water, the climate
was generally a few degrees
warmer at all latitudes, and the
oxygen content of the air was a
trifle higher. Gravity was six per
cent lighter, and in shape it was
a bit more flattened at the poles.
Its day was three minutes shorter
than that of Earth, and its equator
was an impassable jungle belt, de-
void of settlements.

All of the settlements, in fact,
were in the northern hemisphere,
in the middle latitudes. And it
was here that the strangeness set
in.

These settlements showed no
signs of civilization whatever.

No use of artificial illumination
at night had been sighted, nor
were there evidently airships of
any kind. The instruments had
failed to detect any use of atomic
energy. There were no metropoli-
tan centers. And large segments
of land were obviously in cultiva-
tion, apparently for food . . . more
primitive than which it was im-
possible to imagine.

A bucolic world, on the face of
it. A primitive paradise which had
reverted to a pre-civilized agricul-
tural level. Pity they couldn’t
have been left to stagnate in
peace.

Why the world had been left
off the charts no one present
could guess. The charts, carefully
assembled, translated and trans-

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDEN

49

cribed after the New Empire had
been built up from the rubble of
the Dark Ages following the col-
lapse of the Old Empire, had al-
ways been assumed to be correct.
The Old Empire had burned it-
self out in its attempt to seed the
stars with humanity, finally bring-
ing about its own collapse and the
Dark Ages that had followed by
so doing. And during those Dark
Ages, contact with the far-flung
colonies had been lost. It was only
now, five hundred years after the
dissolution of the Old Empire,
that once again Earth was master
of space. Now once again the Pro-
tectorate was being expanded,
and the Lost Colonies were being
rediscovered and reintegrated in-
to the Empire.

The other five Scientists mono-
toned slowly through their re-
ports, and then Glorring turned
inquisitively to Cahann. “You’ve
heard,” he said. “What do you
think? Are these people peaceful,
or are they warlike?”

Cahann shook his head. “I have
no idea,” he said. “I can’t tell
much about their social structure
from what I’ve just heard.
They’re pre-industrial, obviously,
and it doesn’t seem as though
their number can be very large.
But we don’t have any records.
We don’t know who founded the
colony, how long ago, under what
kind of charter, or with what sort
of original population. In this situ-

ation, there’s only one way for me
to learn anything, and that’s to go
down and take a look.”

Glorring considered, his bullet
head bowed in thought. At last,
he said, “You have to see these
natives in person, is that it?”

Cahann nodded.

“Very well. We will land near
one of the larger settlements, and
you will leave the ship. You will
spend one hour studying the na-
tives, and then you will return. If
you have not returned in that
time, we will make every effort to
rescue you.”

“Thank you,” murmured Ca-
hann.

Strull was suddenly active,
whispering into His Excellency’s
ear. Glorring nodded.

“You will have an enlisted man
with you,” he told Cahann. “To
protect you,” he lied blandly.

“Thank you,” said Cahann,
deadpan, not looking at Strull.

II

T^LAN and Brent sat together
in their cubicle on block six.
They had felt the speed-transi-
tion, and knew now that the ship
was moving in normal speed. But
that was all they knew. It didn’t
seem as though they had come
out of FTL for a Colony, since
they hadn’t been put on battle
standby, and of course conflicting
rumors were spreading through-

r out the block, and of course none
of the Marines actually had any
idea at all what was going on. All
they could do now was wait.

| Elan was using this time to
good advantage, shining his com-
bat boots. At twenty, he was tall
and slender. Marine life had made
him lean and physically hard. It
had also taught him the knack of
the impassive face, and it had
trained him in patience.

He had, like everyone else on
Earth, been taken into the service
on his sixteenth birthday. After
one year of training and an addi-
tional year of garrison duty on
Earth, he had been assigned to
the Lawrence for the rest of his
twelve-year tour.

He had had trouble adapting to
the military life at first. Having
been born and raised in the Adir-
ondacks of North America, still
the most backward area of Earth,
the tight quarters which had
seemed so natural to the men
from more metropolitan regions
had depressed him for a long
while, though he had gradually
grown used to them.

Brent broke a rather lengthy
silence between them by saying,
“You never know. It might be a
Lost Colony after all. I sure hope
so.”

“It might be,” said Elan non-
commitally. He didn’t sound as
pleased as Brent, but then he
wasn’t a reconvert, and recon-

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDE

verts were always pleased, always
happy.

Reconvert: Former enemy im-
pressed into the service to bring
the force back up to strength after
a military engagement. Surgical
and psychological reconversion,
taking five days, was necessary to
make such a former enemy a will-
ing and malleable Marine. There
was, of course, a good deal lost in-
sofar as initiative, intelligence and
personality were concerned, but
the remainder was a good Marine.

“I sure hope it’s a Lost Colony,”
said Brent. “I’d be glad to get
back into action.”

Elan looked at his friend.
Brent’s squarish face had the
bland smile and smooth com-
plexion of the reconvert, and he
sat stolidly on his bunk, body
completely at rest. In the year
and a half that Brent had been
on the ship, Elan had never seen
any other expression or any other
emotion on Brent’s face. The re-
converts could only be happy.

A trace of wistfulness came into
Elan’s voice: “You know, Brent,
in a way you’re lucky.”

“Sure I’m lucky,” said Brent,
happily but without surprise.
“Good ship, good outfit, good
chow. And every once in a while
a chance to see some good action.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” said
Elan. “I meant — ” he groped for
words — “you don’t ever worry,
ever feel sad or lonely or afraid.”

N 51

50

GALAXY

“Sure,” smiled Brent. “It’s a
great life, Elan.”

“I could volunteer,” said Elan
softly, as though talking to him-
self. “They’d reconvert me if I
asked. But I’d lose an awful lot,
wouldn’t I?”

“Still be the same great outfit,”
said Brent. “We’d still be here,
buddy.”

“But I wouldn’t be the same.”
Elan looked down at himself,
wearing off-duty uniform, and
then gazed out the open side of
the cubicle at the other Marines
he could see. All alike, every one
of them. Only the faces were dif-
ferent. And even there the differ-
ences were small, minimized by
the deadpan encouraged by the
officers.

The thing that he had, that was
him, that made him unique and
different from anyone else — was
there any real reason to keep it, if
it only gave him pain?

There was only one answer to
that. While he gloomily studied
it S/2nd Carr, the flight leader,
stuck his head into the cubicle
and barked, “Elan! Dress uniform
on the double and report to Per-
sonnel Hatch.”

Elan looked up, astonished.
“Sir?”

“Don’t ask me, all I know is
you’re going outside. On the
double. No weapons.”

“Outside,” said Elan.

“Maybe there won’t be any

fight,” said Brent, and it was
clear that upset him, but he was
still smiling happily.

C AHANN leaned against the
wall by the open personnel
hatch, and pointedly ignored
Strull. At the last moment, it had
been decided to send the adjutant
along. Neither one of them was
happy about it.

In a way, Cahann reflected, it
didn’t matter whether Strull and
the enlisted man came along or
not. He could still make every
effort to explain the situation to
the natives, to try to avoid unnec-
essary bloodshed, convince them
that capitulation was their only
defense.

The enlisted men’s elevator
slid open and the Marine who
was to accompany them stepped
out. Cahann glanced at him,
recognized him as only one of the
blank-faced enlisted men, and
looked over at Strull.

“Spaceman!” called Strull
abruptly.

The Marine marched rigidly
over to stand in front of Strull
and raise both hands high over
his head in salute, parroting,
“Spaceman Third Class Elan re-
porting as ordered, sir.”

Strull returned the salute half-
heartedly, barely raising his
hands above his shoulders. The
Marine’s arms snapped down to
his sides. Strull said, “You will

52

GALAXY

accompany us, keeping your eyes
open for any danger. You will
speak only when spoken to or if
necessary to give warning of dan-
ger. You will not speak to any
native under any circumstances.
Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” snapped the boy.

“Very well. You will proceed.
Cahann, second.”

Of course, thought Cahann
grimly. Inverse order of rank,
when the probability of attack is
unknown.

The three of them went out
and down the ramp, the Marine
first in the dull gray of his dress
uniform, Cahann second in the
paler gray of his civilian garb, and
Strull third, wearing his scarlet
uniform.

And the man at the foot of the
ramp wore a white shirt and tan
knee-length trousers and was
barefooted. And smiling.

Cahann stopped abruptly
when he. saw the native, then
started moving again, since the
Marine was still descending
ahead of him, and Strull was com-
ing along in the rear.

The Marine reached the foot of
the ramp.

The native stepped aside to
allow him to pass. Then he
stepped back into Cahann’s path
and said, in perfect Terran,
“Wondered when you people
would make up your minds to
land and come out of that silly

tin can of yours. The name’s
Harvey. Welcome to Cockaigne.”

Cahann could only gape. Per-
fect Terran? No variations at all
in five hundred years?

“Well, well, come along,” said
Harvey with brisk cheeriness.
“Got to meet the others, you
know.”

Strull pushed past Cahann and
announced, “I am Adjutant Cap-
tain Strull. I greet you on behalf
of the Empire of Earth and the
Protectorate, and on behalf of
Vice-Marshal Helmut Glorring.”

Harvey glanced at Strull, nod-
ded, said, “Greetings yourself,”
and turned away in obvious dis-
missal. Linking his arm through
Cahann’s, he said, “It’s just over
this way. Come along.”

Ill

^TRULL marched along in
^ growing indignation, stung by
the native’s snub and impatient
for a chance to do something
about it.

The ship had landed in the
middle of a large squarish mead-
ow, with forest backed up
against low broad hills on three
sides. The settlement — the larg-
est one on the planet and still
tiny by Earth standards — was on
the fourth side. It was toward this
settlement that they were walk-
ing.

The Settlement, when they

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDEN

53

finally came to it, was certainly
nothing to crow about, not in
Strull’s considered opinion. It was
about as primitive as one could
get and still survive. There wasn’t
even a transparent dome over the
settlement. And these people
were surely not advanced enough
to have complete weather con-
trol; which could only mean that
they were, from time to time,
actually rained upon!

Strull glanced upward appre-
hensively, wondering if anything
of the kind were about to happen
now. But the sky was clear blue,
with only a few small fluffy
clouds. Strull was pessimistically
surprised. The way things were
going today, he wouldn’t have
been a bit surprised if he’d
walked directly into a thunder-
storm.

Strull looked again at the set-
tlement. Buildings of various sizes
and shapes and colors — though
none of them more than one story
high — were spotted haphazardly
here and there, with no order or
precision to them at all. Nor was
there any sort of pavement or
streets, only narrow brown paths
worn into the grass, leading hither
and yon.

“The meeting hall,” Strull
heard the native say to Cahann,
“is just over this way. We’re all
anxious to get to know you people
better.”

When they arrived at the en-
54

trance of the meeting hall Strull
said coldly, “All right, Cahann,
I’ll take over.” He stepped ahead,
following the native inside.

There was just the one room
within, and the walls were only
the one thickness of planed lum-
ber. At this latitude, it would
never get cold enough to make
more than that really necessary,
though there was a rough stone
fireplace in one wall.

An amateurish platform, a foot
high, was at the far end, with
three small stools on it. Other
stools were scattered here and
there, not in rows or any sort of
order at all. And people were sit-
ting on them, dressed somewhat
like the first native, though there
was no uniform pattern to their
clothing except its rustic simpli-
city.

The native led the way to the
platform and turned to Strull to
say, “I imagine you want to
make some sort of speech now.
Want me to introduce you? Or
would you rather just begin on
your own?”

“I can handle it myself, thank
you,” Strull told him, with frosty
dignity.

THHE native shrugged and went
back to sit on one of the
stools. Cahann was already seated
on the second, and the enlisted
man was glancing at the third as
though he wasn’t quite sure

GALAXY

whether he should take it or not.
Strull gave him a one-second
glower, to let him know he
shouldn’t, and then turned to the
audience.

“My name,” he boomed, “is
Strull, Captain Adjutant to Vice-
Marshal Glorring of the TSS
(E&D) Lawrence. I greet you of
the planet, uh — ” What the dick-
ens had that native called this
place?

The native in question leaned
forward to stage-whisper, “Cock-
aigne.”

“Cockaigne, yes. Thank you. I
greet you, citizens of the planet
Cockaigne, on behalf of the Em-
pire of Earth and the Protector-
ate, and additionally on behalf of
Vice-Marshal Glorring, Primate
Representative. I congratulate
you on your rediscovery by the
Empire of Earth and the Protec-
torate, and I welcome you as a
Confederated State in good stand-
ing within the Protectorate and
beneath the benign and omnipo-
tent protection of the Empire of
Earth.”

Strull inhaled, having just bare-
ly begun his speech, but he
noticed that a bearded native to-
ward the back of the room had
risen to his feet and was waving
a hand for attention. Strull
frowned, paused, and in a lower*
voice than previously said, “You
had a question?”

“That I did,” said the man.

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDE

While somewhat older and more
hairy than the first native, he
shared with him an identical ex-
pression of lazy insolence. “I was
just wondering,” he said, “how
you can manage to rediscover us
for your Empire when we were
never a part of your Empire to
begin with.”

Strull allowed a smile of supe-
rior knowledge to curve his lips.
“Ah,” he said, “but you were in
the Empire at one time, over five
hundred years ago. I assume all
records of a time that far back
have been lost, but I can assure
you that it is so. Surprising as it
may seem to you, humanity is not
native to this world. You are
descendants of the original colo-
nists sent here by the Old Empire,
which collapsed five hundred
years ago and which only now has
been fully restored.”

“Sorry,” said the native, not
looking at all sorry, “but you’ve
got your history a little confused.
This world wasn’t settled five
hundred years ago by the Old
Empire, it was settled seven hun-
dred years ago by the United
States of America.”

Strull had never heard the
term. He blinked rapidly, saying,
“What? What, what?”

And that blasted Cahann
spoke up, not bothering at all to
hide his dislike for Strull. Didn’t
he realize that they should show
these yokels a united front?

N 55

C AHANN leaned forward to
say, “Regional government
on Earth. One of the last.
There’ve been some indications in
the old manuscripts that it did do
some small-scale colonizing of its
own, shortly before the Empire
took over. We’ve always assumed
that their efforts were unsuccess-
ful.”

“Nonsense,” said Strull. “Non-
sense.”

The bearded native shook his
head. “Not at all,” he insisted.
“We beat your Empire by a good
two hundred years.”

“This planet,” said Strull des-
perately, “is part of the Protector-
ate of the Empire of Earth, as of
this moment, and that’s all there
is to it! No questions!”

“I’ve got a question anyway,”
said a rather attractive young
woman toward the front of the
hall. “What if we don’t want to be
part of your silly Empire?”

“That,” Strull told her happily,
on familiar ground again, “would
be tantamount to revolution.
And we would be regrettably
forced to put down any revolu-
tion.”

“We certainly wouldn’t want
that,” said the young woman. A
number of the other natives
nodded in agreement, but they all
seemed to have faint smiles drift-
ing about their lips, as though
they thought the whole discussion
rather funny.

The native who had first met
them got to his feet and said,
“We’ll have to talk this over some,
and decide what to do about you
people. You can go on back to
your tin can now. Tell your boss
we’ll let him know our decision in
a day or two.”

Strull was just as pleased. He’d
come, seen that the natives were
anything but dangerous, had said
his piece, and now he was more
than ready to return to the ship.
“Come along,” he said to Cahann
and the enlisted man.

“These two can stay here,”
said the native. “We may have
some questions to ask them.”

“Definitely not!” cried Strull.
There was no telling what a sedi-
tionist like Cahann might say if
left alone with these people.

“They’ll be perfectly safe
here,” said the native unnecessar-
ily. “Go on back to the ship.”

Well, in that case — “I will
come back with his Excellency in
an hour,” said Strull.

He was halfway back to the
ship before he began to wonder
just what the dickens had hap-
pened there. He hadn’t intended
to leave Cahann and the enlisted
man, not under any circum-
stances. But the native had said
something — he couldn’t precisely
remember what any more — and
for some reason that had seemed
to change things.

Why? He was somehow con-

56

GALAXY

fused, he couldn’t for the life of
him figure out exactly what had
happened toward the end there.

It was all that had happened
to him today, that’s what it was.
Glorring being such a nasty mar-
tinet about his weight, and Ca-
hann baiting him, and the native
being so insolent, and all the rest
of it. No wonder he was a little
confused.

But his face was still puckered
in a bewildered frown as he con-
tinued back to the ship.

/^AHANN, baffled, watched the
^ natives, who had burst into
laughter the minute Strull left the
hall. It was his job, as psysociohis-
torian, to understand and categor-
ize human societies, from the
most complex industrial world to
the smallest family group. Human
social groupings, that was his sub-
ject matter, seen in historical con-
text, the sociologist’s what? com-
plemented by the psychologist’s
why?

In essence, his job was even
simpler than that. Every human
grouping, from the smallest fam-
ily to the largest industrial com-
plex, had some sort of loophole in
it, some spot for the Empire to
insert itself and thus make the
grouping at last only another part
of the Empire. It was his job to
find the loophole. He did the job
well, because he enjoyed it in the
abstract. He understood that he

was making quite a large contri-
bution to the Empire’s subjuga-
tion of more and more human be-
ings, but he didn’t suppose he had
any choice in the matter. His
work fascinated him, and he could
only perform that work in the
service of the Empire. His refusal
to work would not have changed
the course of events one iota. An-
other psysociohistorian would
simply have taken his place, leap-
ing at the opportunity to get
away for even a little while from
the rigid anti-intellectualism of
the college campus.

Since he enjoyed his work, and
since he had the curious facility to
separate it from its end product,
and since he was additionally a
highly intelligent man, he was
one of the best psysociohistorians
in the business. He had pro-
gressed to the point where his
understanding of new societies
and new cultures was so rapid as
to be almost intuitive.

This was the first time he had
ever been baffled.

All right, these people were not
the descendants of Old Empire
colonists, they were the descend-
ants of even earlier colonists than
that. But they were people, never-
theless. They were an aggregate
group. They should certainly have
reacted in one of a limited num-
ber of predictable ways.

They hadn’t.

Throughout his contact with

*

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDEN

57

them so far, they had behaved in
no known manner whatsoever.
Making fun of Strait — he liked to
do that himself, but that was be-
cause he knew the little blimp,
and he hadn’t done it on first
meeting him anyway — and acting
as though the threat of the ship
and its complement of Marines
were no threat at all. And then
all at once bursting into laughter
for no reason that Cahann could
see.

r | ''HE laughter having finally
subsided, Harvey came over
to Cahann and said, “You have a
lot of questions to ask. That’s only
natural. Where do you want to
begin?”

“I’m not sure,” admitted Ca-
hann. He looked at them, and
they were all attentive now, more
serious than they had been up to
now. “I think I’d better begin
with basics,” he said. “Govern-
ment, for instance.”

“Democratic anarchy,” said
Harvey promptly. “The will of
the minority.” He laughed at the
expression on Cahann’s face. “Not
what you’re thinking,” he said.
“Not a ruling minority in your
Empire sense.” He motioned at
the others in the hall. “We’re a
minority,” he said, “of the people
on Cockaigne. Every settlement
is a minority. If you disagree with
us, you can go find a settlement
where people agree with you. If

«

there is no such place, you can
either change your thinking or be
a hermit, it’s up to you.”

‘What about criminals?” Ca-
hann asked him. “What do you do
with them?”

“Hermits,” said Harvey suc-
cinctly.

“All right, what about money?”
Harvey shook his head. “I
know what you mean,” he said,
“but we don’t use it. A society has
to be more complex and sophisti-
cated than ours to need money.
Value symbols — and that’s what
money is, after all — are usually
the result of expanding travel,
trade over larger and larger areas.
We rarely travel, and we neither
import nor export, so simple bar-
ter is gOod enough for us.”

“What about war between the
settlements?” Cahann asked him.

“None,” said Harvey. “Con-
trolled population growth is a bet-
ter answer. We don’t need more
land than we have.”

“You’ve never had a war?”
“Never.”

“So you don’t have much by
way of military armaments.”
“Nothing at all.”

“Then why,” Cahann de-
manded, “are you so sure you
won’t be conquered by that ship-
load of Marines out there?”

That set them all laughing
again, though Cahann couldn’t
see that he’d said anything partic-
ularly funny. He glanced at the

58

GALAXY

ana saw only me normal
blank expression. The Marine
waS staring straight ahead, at

nothing-

The laughter stopped abruptly,
and Harvey said, “I’m sorry, Ca-
hann. You don’t understand the
situation here yet.”

“I’m well aware of that,” said
Cahann stiffly.

‘You aren’t going to under-
stand by asking questions,” Har-
vey told him. He got to his feet
and said, “I can show you more
easily than I can explain to you.
Do you want to come along with
me?”

Cahann hesitated, then stood.
The Marine did likewise, but Har-
vey said, ‘You stay here, Elan,
if you please. Harriet there wants
to talk to you while we’re gone.”
He gestured at the young woman
who had spoken to Strull, and
who was now coming forward,
smiling pleasantly.

Cahann said hesitating, “I’m
not sure — ”

“ — you should separate?” fin-
ished Harvey, smiling again.
“Face it, Cahann, the two of you
together with a roomful of us are
no safer than you would be sepa-
rated. Come along.”

Cahann paused again, then
shrugged and said, “You’re right.”
With a backward glance at the
Marine, whose expressionless face
was beginning to crack under an
onslaught of frightened bewilder-

ment, he followed Harvey out of
the meeting hall.

Outside, Harvey gestured away
to the right, deeper into the settle-
ment. “This way,” he said.

Something in the man’s tone,
or in his expression, or perhaps
just in the posture of his body,
made Cahann suddenly appre-
hensive. Just what was this he
was walking into?

“You want to know, don’t
you?” Harvey asked him, chal-
lenging him.

“Yes,” said Cahann. “Yes, I
want to know.” He stepped out
firmly in the direction the other
man had indicated.

IV

"C'LAN was alone now, and
scared out of his wits. The
girl who’d been called Harriet
came up on the platform, smiling
at him in a useless attempt at
reassurance. “Please don’t be
frightened, Elan,” she said. “We
just want to get to know you,
that’s all.”

He looked at them, too fright-
ened at being alone to be able to
read their expressions.

Harriet sat down beside him.
“Don’t be upset, Elan. Just talk
to us. Tell us about yourself.”

He mumbled, “I don’t know
what to say.”

“Tell us about your life on the
ship,” she suggested.

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDEN

59

His mind filled with memories
of the rigid military discipline of
the ship, but he knew better than
to give information to potential
enemies and so said only, “Life on
the ship is just ordinary. Like gar-
rison duty anywhere. That’s all.”

Unexpectedly, that seemed to
satisfy them, and the girl Harriet
said, “Tell us about Earth, then.
Tell us about your home on
Earth.”

Earth. Home! Oh, but that was
something else again. His home
section, peaceful and beautiful.

Harriet said, surprise plain in
her face and voice, “Is all of Earth
like that?”

He stared at her, and felt a
moment of complete panic. He
hadn’t said anything!

She seemed to understand.
She laughed, a bit shakily, and
patted his hand. “Don’t go so
goggle-eyed,” she told him. “The
expression on your face told
volumes. It’s clear you love your
own home section, but what of the
rest of Earth? Tell us about the
big cities.”

He made as though to rise. “I
— I have to go back — ”

“No, no, they’ll come for you.
They said it was all right for you
to stay here.” She held his hand,
gazing at him with an expression
he couldn’t define. “Little rabbit,”
she said soothingly. “Poor little
rabbit No one will frighten you
any more.”

LORRING had stripped down
to loinpiece and was wres-
tling with Chief Astrogator Koll
when Strull returned. Seeing the
adjutant enter the ready room,
Glorring quit fooling around. He
kneed the astrogator, kidney,
punched him and gave him an
elbow in the eye. Koll staggered
back across the ready room, while
the other officers shouted appreci-
ation. Glorring signaled the end
of the match.

Immediately, his dressers came
forward to towel him dry and put
his golden uniform back on him.

Glorring gazed bleakly at
Strull. “Took you long enough,”
he snapped. “Report.”

“Yes, sir. We encountered the
natives and — ”

“Where’s Cahann?” Glorring
interrupted.

“I left him there,” said Strull
promptly. “He — ”

“You what?”

“I left the enlisted man with
him,” explained Strull. “There’s
nothing to worry about, Excel-
lency.”

“Oh, there isn’t, eh?” Glorring
couldn’t stand a weakling, and
Strull was by far the weakest
boob on the ship. It was about
time, Glorring decided, to make a
man out of that wart. “You go
right on, Captain Strull,” he said.
“You go right on and tell me all
about it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Strull briskly,

60

GALAXY

n d then seemed to falter. He
Rooked completely confused for a
second, and then said, “Well, uh,
aS I said, we encountered the
natives. I spoke to a group of
them in their meeting hall, telling
them who we were and the pur-

pose

of our coming here. They

claimed, by the way, that they
w eren’t Old Empire colonists
after all, but colonists from an
even earlier time than that. I for-
get the name of the government
that sent them, but they claimed
it was seven hundred years ago.”
Koll, somewhat recovered,
chimed in, “So that’s why they
weren’t on the charts.”

“It would seem so,” said Glor-
ring. “Go on, Captain Strull. We
haven’t come to the interesting
part yet. The part where you left
Cahann and the Marine and re-
turned to the ship alone.”

“Yes, sir.” Strull gnawed a low-
er lip for a second, as though
gathering his thoughts, and then

went on in a rush. “Well, sir, after
I spoke to these natives, I got sus-
picious. They’re as backward a
bunch as you’ll ever see. Not a
bit of mechanization around them
at all. But they talk as though
they don’t even consider us a
threat. Apparently, they feel as
though they have some sort of
secret weapon or something. So I
ordered Cahann to stay behind,
because he’s particularly qualified
for that sort of thing, and see what

he could find out from the natives.
And I ordered the Marine to stay
and keep an eye on Cahann.”
“Brilliant,” said Glorring, with
heavy sarcasm. “Absolutely bril-
liant, Captain Strull.”

“Of course,” said Strull hastily,
“there was another reason, too. It
was impossible in the short time I
was there to get any idea of their
system of government. And of
course mine was just first contact,
and I had no wish, your Excel-
lency, to usurp your prerogative
of direct negotiation with the
local governmental leaders. So
Cahann is to find out just who
heads the local government and
where he can be found, so you’ll
be able to go directly to him when
the time comes and not have to
waste time asking directions of
underlings.”

Glorring raised an eyebrow.
That made sense, surprisingly. Of
course, Strull was only currying
favor by doing this, but neverthe-
less it was sensible for Glorring to
be able to go directly to the local
authority. “Very well,” he said.
“You did better than I expected,
Strull. Very good.”

Strull bowed, relief plain on his
face. “Thank you, Excellency.”
“Very well,” said Glorring, to
the room in general. “We will give
Cahann an hour to find out all he
can. In one hour, I shall leave the
ship. We shall be escorted by one
flight of Marines on foot, the

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDEN

61

other three flights to be at com-
bat-ready stations. One hour.”

/^AHANN was in love. It had
^ just happened.

It was calling to him, because
it loved him, and he went to it,
because he returned that love, be-
cause he loved it as much as it
loved him, because to love it and
to be loved by it was greater and
more wonderful and more right
than anything else in all of life.

They had left the meeting hall,
he and Harvey. They had walked,
almost aimlessly, among the scat-
tered unordered buildings of the
•settlement and slowly it had
grown upon him, this acquisition
of love, this new understanding of
the meaning and depth of love,
this new completion which was
possible only with the loved one,
close to the loved one, blending
with the loved one . . .

It was in this direction. Not far
away now, closer and closer. They
had walked aimlessly, almost as
though Harvey were allowing
Cahann to choose his own direc-
tion. Then Cahann had chosen
his direction, and it was this way,
this way toward love and toward
fulfillment and toward comple-
tion, this way toward It which
desired him above all things.

Before, just after they’d left the
meeting hall, Cahann had been
full of questions, had tried to ask
them at once, but Harvey had

raised a hand to stop him, saying, |
“Not yet. I’ll answer all your 1
questions, I promise that, but not
just yet. Let me show you this!
first.”

“What is it?” Cahann had asked
him.

“I don’t think I could explain it
to you,” Harvey had said. “When
you see it, you’ll understand why.
When you see it, you’ll under-
stand a lot of things that are
puzzling you now.”

“This thing, whatever it is you
want to show me,” Cahann had
said, “this is what you think will
protect you from the Empire, is
that it?”

“Not precisely,” Harvey had
said. “Please, don’t try to guess.
That won’t do any - good. Just
come along. Once you’ve seen it,
you’ll understand; and that will
be that.”

So they had fallen silent. And
they had walked aimlessly, back
and forth, and Cahann had just
about come to the conclusion that
he was being given a- runaround,
that they were simply retracing
their steps among the buildings of
the settlement and not really get-
ting anywhere at all, when the
first faint touches of it had
reached him.

Desire.

Love.

Warmth and compassion and
understanding.

A need for him, for him and

62

GALAXY

alone of all the creatures of
^universe, all the creatures that
had ever lived or ever would live,
frt no one and nothing but him.

It had come upon him almost
annoticeably, like an aroma
creeping into a room, and it is
strong in the room before you
even notice it. And so it was with
this, it was only a faint unnoticed

sensation until suddenly it had

been there for a long time and
had grown strong and was now
all-pervasive in his mind.

This way, it called. This way.

A message of love, a message of
desire and understanding and ful-
fillment; and he had followed it,,
he had turned in the path it had
pointed out, and now Harvey
trailed him, unnoticed and un-
needed, and he hurried toward his
beloved, who hungered for him.

He felt like running, but there
was really no reason to run. They
would have all eternity together,
now that they had found one an-
other at last. And so he walked
through the settlement, striding
certainly forward, eyes bright
with love and hope. He reached
the last of the houses of the settle-
ment and the edge of the woods
beyond, and stepped unhesitat-
ingly into the woods, for the loved
one was in there, beckoning to
him, calling for him, needing him.

And Harvey trailed along be-
hind him, two or three paces be-
hind him.

TTE was getting closer and
closer, so close he could feel
his skin tingling with anticipation,
so close that the sweat broke out
all over his body and his mouth
hung open and his eyes stared for
a sight of the beloved.

And then, at last, he came to it,
where it stood in its own small
clearing.

It was the head of Medusa, a
thick green plant with many sinu-
ous waving arms reaching up and
out from the single stubby base,
the whole nearly eight feet high
and five feet in diameter. The
rubbery green branches, or arms,
swayed slowly, as though from a
breeze, and at their tips were
great scarlet flowers with thick
petals, the flowers as big as a
man’s head. The arms swayed vol-
uptuously, and the petals of the
flowers, which looked like great
rough tongues, scraped together
with a sound like the smacking of
dry lips.

This was It, the beloved, the
purpose of all life.

This was his destination and
his ending and his fulfillment.

For what greater purpose could
any creature have than the satis-
faction of the hungers of It?

What was there in life more
wonderful than the feeding of It?

How grand and blessed and
wonderful it was that he had been
chosen, he of all the beings that
lived and moved, he had been

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDEN

63

chosen to give himself to the be-
loved, to feed it and so to become
a part of it forever.

To throw himself at its base
and give himself to its hunger.

But as he stepped forward into
the clearing, and the great scarlet
flowers beckoned and bowed to
him, he was suddenly stopped.
Some petty creature was clutch-
ing at him, trying to hold him
back, trying to keep him from his
proper completion.

He pushed the creature aside.
But it came back, and again,
grabbing at him, clutching at him,
pulling him away, keeping him
always just out of reach of the
beckoning scarlet flowers which
hungered for him.

And then more of the foul filthy
creatures arrived and overpow-
ered him. And though he fought
against them, though It gave him
the strength of fury and of love,
he was borne down and back, car-
ried bodily away from the clear-
ing and away from the sight of his
beloved.

And still he fought, and the
creatures dragged him back and
back, out of the woods and among
constructions which were of no
moment to him, for the beloved
was there, back there, still calling
to him.

And when at last he knew that
it was hopeless, that the creatures
were not going to release him
ever, that he would never be able

to complete himself at the base of 1
his beloved, he shrieked with the ;
torment of the greatest loss and '•
the greatest sorrow that any be- ,
ing had ever known. He shrieked
and shrieked, till one of the crea-
tures struck him. And then black-
ness rushed in, and he knew no \
more.

V

'T'HBY could read his mind!

Every thought!

Elan sat on the platform in ter-
ror of his life. That was their
secret, and he knew it now, and
the nature of their secret was such
that they must know he knew it.

The girl Harriet’s slip when
she had asked him to describe his
home had been the first indica-
tion, but it had seemed too fan-
tastic to be believed, and he had
chosen to accept her flimsy ex-
cuse.

But gradually, as the question-
ing had gone on, he had seen that
the people in the room were list-
ening attentively not to the eva-
sions and generalizations he was
saying but to the truths he was
thinking. The play of expression
on an unguarded face, a look pass-
ing between two people, things
which could have been produced
only by his thoughts, and not by
his words.

Until finally there just wasn’t
any choice any more, there

64

GALAXY

/

I

weren’t any other possible an-
swers. But still they played out
the game with him, Harriet asking
the questions and he stumbling
through the useless answers.

At one point, a kind of wave
seemed to go through them all,
they looking at one another with
suddenly widened eyes, and five
men at the back of the room got
to their feet and hurried outside.
He tried to recall what his
thoughts had been at that second,
but it didn’t seem as though their
strange apprehension had any-
thing to do with him.

The scientist, Cahann?

Harriet patted his hand again,
saying, “Be easy, Elan. You have
nothing to fear.”

He stared at her. “You know
what I’m thinking,” he whispered.
“You’re reading my mind.”

“Be easy, Elan,” she said softly.
“Don’t always expect the worst of
humanity. Not all of mankind has
chosen the path of Earth.”

Then they were silent. He
looked from face to face, and
knew that they were talking to
one another without words, decid-
ing what to do with him and with
Cahann and with all the people
on the ship.

The silence was suddenly shat-
tered by a shriek from outside the
building, and a second shriek on
the heels of the first. “Cahann!”
he cried, leaping to his feet. Jump-
ing from the platform, he raced

66

through the natives to the door
and outside.

He ran around the corner of
the building, and stopped dead.

A little distance away was the
man named Harvey, and with
him were the five men who had
left the meeting hall so hurriedly
a few minutes before.

And at their feet lay the body
of Cahann.

r T , HE small band marching out
from the ship in the sunlight
looked hard and lean and impres-
sive. In the lead, herculean in his
golden uniform, marched Glor-
ring. Directly behind him Strull,
and next back two officers march-
ing abreast, Majors Londin and
Corse, respectively in green and
black. Behind them, Captains
Rink (his left arm in a sling) and
Stimmel and Pleque, in blue and
maroon and pale rose. Next, Lieu-
tenants Braldor, Chip, Sassen,
Kommel and Roll, in the multi-
colored uniforms preferred by
most junior officers. And, bring-
ing up the rear, the flight of
Marines in dress gray, S/lst Lor-
etta two paces ahead of them and
S/2nd Kallett at the head of the
middle squad.

There was no music, there were
no flags. These were considered
frills, and an Exploration & Dis-
covery ship was notoriously de-
void of frills.

But they were impressive any-
GALAXY

r f " way-
S rim

The Marines looked deadly
a nd the officers in their
- . jj t colors hearkened back to
the bright-plumed or feather-dec-
orated or body-painted warriors
of the dim past. These were the
warriors of the Empire, respecting
no one but themselves, desiring
nothing but conquest, owing alle-
giance only to the Empire which
equipped them and sent them on
their missions.

Glorring, in the lead, breathed
the sweet air and cast an eye of
ownership over his world.

And it was his world, much
more so than any other Lost Col-
ony he had bagged for the Em-
pire. Here was a verdant globe,
already stocked with colonists, its
existence unsuspected at home.

Glory came to the men who
shepherded the stray Colonies
back to the flock. How much more
glory for the man who discovered
a brand new stray!

Perhaps he might bring a few
specimens of the local colony
back with him. Say ten of them.
Unusual, of course, but this was
an unusual world, an unknown
world. Yes, he would bring ten of
the natives back to Earth with
him.

As they came closer to the set-
tlement, Glorring spied Cahann
and the enlisted man, waiting
near the closest of the buildings.
They were too far away for the
vice-marshal to be able to read

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDEI

their expressions, but he knew
what they must be. Admiring en-
vy on the part of Cahann. Mili-
tary pride on the part of the
Marine.

And, on the faces of the group
of natives waiting with them,
could there be any expression pos-
sible other than a wonderful awe?

Beneath the silver skirts, he all
at once executed a little hop, the
time-honored method for chang-
ing step.

Simultaneously, all the march-
ers behind him did exactly the
same thing.

He didn’t pay any attention to
that at all.

/^AHANN’S expression was
^ somewhat greenish, but not
with envy. It was more the green-
ish tinge of seasickness. He had a
lot to recover from.

His memory of — the thing, it,
the beloved, whatever it had been
— was dim and blurred, and he
had the feeling he didn’t want to
remember it any more clearly
than he did.

There had been an urge, a com-
pulsion, that had seemed at the
time to be right and proper and
natural, and that had also seemed
to come from within, to be his
own invention and own decision.

He remembered the urge, re-
membered with a shudder what
the urge had been, even remem-
bered to some extent the all-inclu-

1 67

sive compulsion of the thing.- But
his memory was pedantic and un-
real, as though he were remem-
bering a particularly vicious tor-
ture which he had never seen
practiced on anyone but about
which he had read graphic and
detailed accounts. They were
second-hand memories; he was
buffered to some extent from
their impact.

On regaining consciousness, the
first thing he had seen had been
Harvey’s face, almost comically
worried. And through a surrealis-
tic damping, he had vaguely
heard Harvey’s voice:

“Cahann! Come out of it, Ca-
hann, it’s all over! Come on, man,
it’s over now, the thing doesn’t
want you any more.”

The last phrase had done it. He
had sat bolt upright, prepared to
scream, and Harvey’s hand had
clapped tight to his mouth, hold-
ing him rigid until the need to
scream had passed. Then the
hand had fallen away. Harvey,
hunkered down beside him, said,
“I’m sorry, Cahann, more sorry
than you know. I hope you can
forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” Cahann raised
a shaking hand to wipe his fore-
head. “I don’t know yet what you
did to me,” he confessed.

“I had no idea,” Harvey told
him, “just how strong the enticer
could be for somebody who didn’t
have any preparation. No wonder

it killed so many in the first fe^l
generations.”

“What was it?” Cahann asked
him. He felt stronger now, but his
limbs ached as though he’d been
tensing them too hard for too
long. “What in time was it?”
“Our ancestors called it ‘en-
ticer,”’ Harvey told him. “When
they came here, the plant infested
the whole planet. There’s only a
few left now, except around the
jungle belt of the equator. We
haven’t bothered to clean them
out down there. We can’t use the
land anyway, and their range isn’t
very far.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s an enticer,” said Harvey.
“It entices animal food, broad-
casting a kind of telepathic beam
that attracts anything that moves.
We think the beam is connected
with the flowers’ smell, but we’ve
never proved it one way or the
other.”

“All right,” said Cahann shak-
ily. “It got to me, so it does work.
But why doesn’t it go after you
people? Why only me?”

“It does go after us,” Harvey
told him. “It goes after every liv-
ing thing that gets close enough.”
“You mean you’ve built up re-
sistance to it? I don’t see how you
get the chance.”

46TT doesn’t work quite that
way.” Harvey seemed to
consider for a moment, and then

68

GALAXY

he said, “Have you ever heard of
m ental telepathy?”

“Of course.”

“What do you think of it, as a

possibility?”

“j think it’s nonsense,” said
Cahann promptly. So did Harvey,
saying it right with him word for

word.

Cahann frowned. “What was
that all about?” he asked, and
Harvey asked the question in
harmony with him.

Cahann pondered, then nodded
his head, saying, “Oh, I get it. But
that doesn’t — ” He stopped, rath-
er precipitately. Because every
one of the twenty or twenty-five
natives around him had been say-
ing exactly the same words, in
chorus with him.

Harvey smiled slightly. “You
think that doesn’t prove any-
thing,” he said, “because those are
the words you might have been
expected to say. All right, say
something unexpected.”

Cahann looked at him, thinking
furiously. He glanced at the en-
listed man, who was gaping at
everything with such a complete
look of blank astonishment that
Cahann at once felt better. At
least there was one person present
who was more baffled than he.

Cahann gnawed on the inside of
his cheek, trying to think. Telep-
athy? The word was known, the
field existed, but the researchers
in the field were, so far as Cahann

had ever known, exclusively
crackpots and panacea-peddlers.

Could the thing really exist?
All he had to do was open his
mouth and say one word, any
word at all, and he would know.

He wasn’t quite sure he wanted
to know.

Mind-readers.

Peeping toms.

No privacy at all.

“It isn’t as bad as all that,”
Harvey told him. “Shields do de-
velop. Go ahead, say something.”

Cahann took a deep breath and
said: “Canteloupe!”

Twenty-five voices bellowed it
with him: “Canteloupe!”

Harvey smiled. “Okay?”

VI

Z"' 1 AH ANN felt suddenly tired.

Too much too soon. He
wiped his forehead with his palm.
He was still sitting on the ground,
Harvey squatting beside him and
the others, with the goggle-eyed
Marine, standing around in front
of him. He leaned forward, arms
lax, and gazed bleakly at the
ground between his knees.

“All right,” he said dully. “Tell
me about it.”

“I don’t know what the coloni-
zation methods of the Old Empire
were,” Harvey told him, “but our
ancestors were on a one-way
street. They got on their ship, left
Earth, traveled until they found a

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDEN

69

place where they could land and
live, and that was it. There was
no contact with Earth, and no
way to get back to Earth. Nor
was there any way to leave their
new home once they’d chosen it.
The ship needed a complex
launching pad they weren’t
equipped to build.

“So they came here,” he went
on, motioning at the world around
them. “They landed, stripped
down the ship for parts, planted,
started to build shelters . . . and
then the enticer went to work on
them.”

“The way it did on me,” said
Cahann.

“Exactly. Now, here’s the point.
Telepathic ability is dormant, to
a greater or lesser extent, in every
human being who ever lived.
Back on Earth, there were count-
less cases of individuals whose
ability was advanced almost to
the threshold of self-awareness.
You see, the capability is greater
in some people than in others.
Just as some people have better
memories than others, some are
better at mathematics than
others, and so on.”

Cahann nodded.

“To get back to the original set-
tlers of Cockaigne,” said Harvey.
“They were stranded here, five
thousand of them. And they were
being picked off by the enticer,
which struck them telepathically,
and below the level of conscious

resistance. Do you see what that!
meant?”

“I think so,” said Cahann. “Jt
meant that the people with the
greatest telepathic capacity
would be the ones most likely to
survive. The ones who could
catch what the enticer was doing ‘
in time to get back out of range.” ]

“Of course,” said Harvey. “On
this planet, for the first time i n
man’s history, telepathic ability
was the primary survival charac-
teristic. This world forced man to
breed for telepathy. The survivors
of each generation were just a
little bit more advanced toward
full use of the ability than the
generation before them.”

“Until now,” Cahann finished
for him, “you are all fully telep-
athic.”

“Exactly. And with, in addition,
the complementary abilities that
go along with it. Such as the
shield. And such as, for instance —
well, for instance, what’s your
name?”

He looked at Harvey blankly.
Why ask that?

“Come on,” said Harvey. “Tell
me your name.”

“My name’s . .

He didn’t know. He thought
desperately, trying to remember,
and it just wasn’t there. He didn’t
know his own name! It was as
though he had never had a name,
as though a name had never been
given him.

70

GALAXY

“Your name’s Cahann,” Harvey
told him gently.

Of course! How stupid to for-
get it!

Cahann looked sharply at Har-
ve y, in sudden understanding.
“You made me forget it.”

Harvey nodded.

It was as though a dull weight
were pressing on Cahann’s soul,
“js there no limit to what you
people can do?” he asked.

“There are limits,” Harvey
told him, “but they’re nothing to
worry about.”

“What are you going to do with

USr

“We’ve been trying to decide.
At first, when you’d just landed
here, we thought the best thing to
do was make you take off again at
once, and give you the idea the
planet was uninhabitable. It’s un-
likely any other Earth ship will
ever stumble across us.”

“I wish you had done that,”
Cahann told him.

TTARVEY smiled. “You won’t
when we’re finished with
you,” he said. He motioned at the
Marine, still goggle-eyed in the
background. “See Elan there?
He’s an intelligent boy. He’s also
a latent telepath of a very high
order. Harriet tells me she thinks
she could bring the ability out
completely in less than a year.
But do you know what Earth has
done to that boy?”

Cahann looked. at the Marine,
not understanding. He hadn’t ever
really paid any attention to him,
he was simply an impassive face
and a uniform, one of the deper-
sonalized enlisted men from block
six.

“Of course,” said Harvey.
“That’s what you think of him.
That’s what everybody thinks of
him. They’ve told him so long
and so often that he doesn’t count
as a person, as an individual, that
he believes it himself by now. Do
you know that he has seriously
considered requesting reconver-
sion, to kill off the individuality
which was only worthless and
which brought him only self-
doubt and worry? Do you know
that four per cent of Earth’s
Marines every year volunteer for
reconversion? That’s how little
life and individual worth have
come to mean with you people.”

“I didn’t know the figures,”
said Cahann distractedly. He was
gazing at the Marine, trying to
see him as a person, trying to see
him the way Harvey saw him. It
wasn’t easy to do.

“Your Empire,” Harvey told
him, steel now coming into his
voice, “is an open sore. It’s a gap-
ing wound on the face of the uni-
verse. We wouldn’t feel right if
we let it go on,”

“No,” said Cahann. “With all of
your powers, you can’t do that.
You can’t fight the Empire. One

THE EARTHMAN'S BURDEN

71

ship, yes, you could beat one ship.
But not the Empire.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

A native came strolling up at
that point, casually saying,
“Group of them forming outside
the ship. They’re going to come
this way.”

“All right.” Harvey got to his
feet, saying, “Come along, Ca-
hann, We can talk while waiting
for them.”

Cahann stood up, awkwardly.
He was stiff and aching in every
joint. He limped along beside
Harvey, the Marine and the other
natives following.

Harvey said, “We’re going to

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have to make you forget most of
this, but only temporarily. We’d
rather not give the Empire any
warning. Ten of us are going to
go back to Earth with you people,
on your ship.”

“Ten of you? You can’t pos-
sibly — ”

“Don’t worry about it, Ca-
hann,” said Harvey. “Your com-
mander is deciding right now to
bring us along.”

They stopped at the edge of
the meadow. In the distance, the
procession was moving toward
them.

How pompous they looked! Ca-
hann had never noticed that be-
fore, how silly and pompous they
all looked. Nor how completely
defenseless.

“You can do it,” he said in a
low voice. He felt sick and fright-
ened, but at the same time he
was beginning to feel a kind of
exultation. They would do it,
they really would.

And was there any doubt the
Earth would be a better world
when they were finished with
what they would do to it?

“Earth is out of step,” said
Harvey, “out of step with life.
Like this group coming toward us.
They’re all out of step. We have
to change that.”

In the distance, the marching
group all hopped at once, chang-
ing step.

— DONALD E. WESTLAKE

72

GALAXY

for

your
information

BY WILLY LEY

THE END OF THE JET AGE

A FE W years ago Arthur C.

Clarke, having flown into
New York from the West Coast
by sleeper plane, said to me:
“When I woke up this morning it
suddenly occurred to me that I
belong to the only generation of
men who will take a real sleeper
plane. The generation before us
did not fly and the generation
after us will fly so fast that there
won’t be any time for sleep.”

It was a very interesting ob-
servation, which was wrong only

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

73

in the respect of speaking of
generations; it can all happen in
the lifetime of one man. If some-
body was born in 1900 he was
walking around before anybody
flew, except in balloons. This
man might have flown in one of
the early passenger planes which
made it all the way from New
York to Chicago in just a little
over eight hours. He can now be
flying in the Los Angeles-New
York jet, which takes four hours
and twenty minutes from lift-off
in Los Angeles to touchdown on
Idlewild airport. And the same
man won’t be too old, say five or
six years from now, to board the
successor to the jets.

The term “successor to the
jets” must not be misunderstood.
It does not mean that new types
of transportation will make the
jets disappear. Nothing ever
seems to disappear completely.
Soldiers not only carry bayonets
but use them occasionally,
whether there are transcontinen-
tal missiles or not.

r T''HERE are two foreseeable
■*- types of devices which
might be considered successors to
the jets for passenger transporta-
tion. One is the ramjet, now in
use for the propulsion of several
different missiles. The other is
the passenger-carrying rocket.
Since we do have winged mis-
siles which use ramjets for pro-

pulsion it would seem, at first
glance, that the ramjet-powered
passenger liner, flying at an aver-
age of twice the speed of sound,
would be closer to the present. In
a manner of speaking it is, but
there is a problem — which is
either interesting or infuriating,
depending on how you look at it
— in the fact that a ramjet will
not work unless it is moving with
a fairly high speed.

In the case of ramjet-powered
missiles this is easily overcome
by catapulting the missile into
the air, either with a real cata-
pult or else by the use of several
high-power, short duration solid
fuel rockets. As I said, this is
being done with a missile; but
when it comes to passenger carry-
ing aircraft the passengers are
likely to say something about
this. In fact, the passenger’s
strongest argument would be to
say nothing at all and book pas-
sage with another airline.

But the takeoff is not the only
problem. The landing is another
one. When an airliner approaches
the airport area its speed is very
considerably reduced. The final
approach to the runway is made
at about the speed where the
wings will still keep it airborne.
If such a plane were ramjet-pro-
pelled the ramjets just would
not play any more.

The best statement about this
problem I have ever heard was

given after a lecture at New York
University, right after the war,
by Air Commodore Whittle, the
pjan who designed the first Brit-
ish j et engines. When somebody
f ro m the audience asked him
whether he thought the then new
ramjet might ever be used for
piloted aircraft (the questioner
probably had military aircraft in
mind) Commodore Whittle said
that as an engineer he considered
this an interesting problem. “But
as a pilot,” he continued, “I
would hate to approach a runway
with dead engines. This is the
moment where I want to have all
the power I might need — and if
possible a little more.”

Any ramjet-powered airliner
would, therefore, need two sets of
engines, adding turbojets for the
take-off run and for getting the
plane up to the speed it needs
for the ramjets to take over. And
the turbojets would be needed
again for the landing.

And whenever you approach
an engineer with the request of
designing an airplane for two dif-
ferent sets of engines he will
probably lean back as if in
thought. He will be in thought, as
a matter of fact, but he won’t
think about the problem. He’ll
think of a way of getting rid of
you, and he may also consider
whether there is anybody he dis-
likes enough to recommend for
this job.

Even though a ramjet-powered
airliner may look easier it is quite
possible that a rocket-powered
passenger liner is the more likely
successor to today’s jets. Years
ago Dr. Walter Dornberger and
Krafft A. Ehricke designed such
an airliner — or more precisely
they thought about the problem
of how it could be made to work.
In principle, the flight of such a
rocket-powered airliner would be
the same as the flight of a ballistic
missile (in other words: it would
not be really a “flight” in the
proper meaning of the word most
of the time) but with a landing at
the end instead of an impact.
When I mentioned this possibility
at the time, the reaction of the
listener usually was that he would
let anybody else use this device.

But now, after successful
manned orbits of the earth, the
idea may slowly become more
palatable.

As the diagram (Fig. 1 ) shows,
the rocket-propelled passenger
liner would be a two-stage device.
Both stages would have wings and
both stages would be piloted. But
the wings of both stages would
be used mainly for the landing.
The passengers would be in the
second stage.

r | ^AKEOFF would be vertical or
almost vertical, with all eight
rocket motors burning (five in
the first stage and three in the

74

GALAXY

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

75

Fig. 1. Design for a two-stage, passenger-carrying rocket (both stages piloted).

second stage) to produce a maxi-
mum of thrust. But the three
rocket motors of the second stage
would not burn fuel from the
tanks of the second stage during
takeoff. They would take fuel
from the first stage. The fuel sup-
ply of the first stage would be
nearly exhausted after 130 sec-
onds. Then the two stages would
separate. The large, but by then
very light, first stage would drop
behind the second stage . . . which
keeps going, this time using its
own fuel. The job of the pilot of
the first stage would be to fly his
stage on the momentum it has
and ease it around so that it will
return to the airport from which
it took off. Possibly he might fly
it to another conveniently locat-
ed airport; but the ideal would
be to return to the original air-
port, so that the first stage, after
inspection and refueling, can be
used to push another second
stage into its trajectory.

The second stage would mean-
while have gone into a ballistic
trajectory, far flatter than the
ballistic trajectories of missiles.
The highest point of the flight
would be around 28 miles up. It
would actually be a flight in the
upper stratosphere. For the sake
of the passengers, one of the three
rocket motors of the second stage
would be kept burning at very
much reduced thrust. The pur-
pose is not to accelerate the ship
any farther; the purpose is to
spare the passengers from ex-
periencing the zero-g condition,
which is in itself harmless but
might frighten inexperienced
people. The low thrust of the
rocket motor that is kept in op-
eration would also help to over-
come the residual air resistance
which would still be encountered
28 miles up.

Each of the two stages would
have some fuel left, to be used
during the final approach to the

M 51- O 1

76

GALAXY

^way for corrections and for
an emergency pull-out in case a
sudden obstruction appears on
th e runway.

The flying time from Los An-
g e les to New York would be
only a few minutes more than
0 ne hour, or about one quarter of
the time now needed by a turbo-
jet.

The real problem here is the
question “will it pay?” in all its
ramifications. Will it pay for
enough passengers to make a cer-
tain trip in one quarter of the
time it normally takes them now?
In the beginning the picture will
no doubt be falsified by curiosity
travelers, people who don’t have
to make the trip but have the
money to pay for the ticket and
make the trip for the sole purpose
of bragging about it afterwards.
Now, whether it will pay for the
“real” travelers to quarter the
travel time will depend, in a large
measure, on the price of the
ticket. Obviously if the ticket
price is only 20 per cent higher
than the jet fare, the quartering
of the travel time will pay for
many more people than it will if
the ticket price is, say, double the
jet fare.

The ticket price will depend,
in turn, on the fuel consumption
(and the price of the fuel) and
on the number of trips a ship can
make without needing a major
overhaul. All these questions can-

not be answered right now. The
development cost of the ship it-
self will be influenced by how
much it will differ from ships
which the government will have
to develop for space operations
such as the job of supplying the
space station or, possibly, the
servicing of very large communi-
cations satellites.

But passenger travel by rocket
is possible.

And it will come if the finan-
cial problems can economically
be solved.

THE LIVING FOSSIL FROM
CALIFORNIA.

Let me point out first that I
have nothing against readers who
ask me questions. But I do feel
pleased when, once in a while, a
reader tells me something. And I
am especially pleased when a
reader, as in this case Dr. Pedro
Wygodzinsky, tells me something
which I, without his kind inter-
vention, would almost certainly
have missed.

The case is the discovery of an
insect which most certainly de-
serves the designation “living
fossil” in northern California. The
specific place, geographically
speaking, was the northern Cal-
ifornia Coast Range in Mendo-
cino County, near Piercy. The
specific place, ecologically speak-
ing, was under the decaying bark

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

77

and in the rotten logs of fallen
Douglas firs in this area.

The small insect that turned
up in the collections made by
Dr. W. Gertsch and V. Roth
would have been recognized, in
a general way, even by many city
people. A “silverfish” they would
have said, probably wondering
what a silverfish was doing in a
forest. As far as they are con-
cerned, silverfish turn up in little-
used closets, in old-fashioned
pantries and sometimes in books
— old books, that is. The reason
why the book must be old is that
the modern plastic glues now
used in bookbinding hold no at-
traction for silverfish. They are
interested in books bound with
the aid of old-fashioned library
paste, and in wallpaper stuck on
with boiled flour paste.

Now the silverfish which the
city man would have recognized
has the scientific name of Lepis-
ma saccharins, given by old Car-
olus Linnaeus himself. The first
part of the name comes from the
Greek lepisma, which means
“scale” or else something that has
scaled off. The second part of
the name was to indicate that it
loves sugar. Linnaeus probably
was quite used to the spectacle of
half a dozen silverfish darting off
in as many directions when he
reached for his sugar bowl.

They are primitive insects that
do not have wings and do not

Fig. 2. Tricholepidion gertschi. From Califor-
nia. Photograph by Dr. Pedro Wygodzinsky.

go through a metamorphosis.
Their young look like the adults;
they are merely smaller. The
name of the order of insects to
which the silverfish belong is
Thysanura or Bristletails. A total
of about 300 species is known and
there are, of course, several fam-
ilies. And to an expert who knows
what to look for they do not look
alike.

When Dr. Wygodzinsky —
who at the time was on leave
from his normal position in the
Department of Zoology, Univer-
sity of Buenos Aires — looked at
the insects brought back by Dr.
Gertsch, he saw at once that they
were Thysanura. But he also saw
that they were not Lepisma but

78

GALAXY

belonged to a different group. He
did not write me in so many
words that he grew suspicious,
but that must have been the case
for he set out on a collecting trip
of his own for additional specie
mens. He was successful, too.

It looked like a new genus. But
there was something familiar. Dr.
Wygodzinsky remembered what
it was, an insect very closely re-
lated to the one he had alive was
known, but as a fossil. It was
known as an inclusion in Baltic
amber and had been described by
F. Silvestri in 1912. The scien-
tific name of the form preserved
in amber became Lepidothrix,
and the family of which it was the
type was called Lepidotrichidae.

But these were fossils from the
early part of the Oligocene per-
iod. The new insect from north-
ern California was, therefore, a
surviving representative of an
otherwise extinct family of in-
sects. It must be added here that,
while the Thysanura as a whole
are primitive insects, the Lepido-
trichidae are the most archaic of
the Thysanura.

That a genus of these archaic
insects should have survived at
all is remarkable. That it was
found alive in California, while
the extinct relatives were found
in East Prussia, is almost to be
expected. Old forms of animal
and plant life very often turn up
in widely separated places. The

best known example is that of
our opossum, a marsupial. Mar-
supials “normally” belong in
Australia, but we have one in
North America. The customary
explanation for this phenomenon
is that a group of animals (it ap-
plies to plants, too, of course)
will, at one time in its history,
occur over a very wide range and
possibly be of worldwide distri-
bution. But then the climate
turns unfavorable in one area.
The animal type disappears from
that area — not necessarily be-
cause it is directly affected by
the changing climate; it may be
its food which disappears first.
In another area natural enemies
may become victorious, and as a
consequence the type disappears
from that area too. The final
result is that the animal survives
in a few spots . . . which might
be at the extremes of its original
range.

The very fact that occurrence
is so scattered means something
to the expert. If one should learn
that a certain animal type is
found on one of the northern
Japanese islands, near Cape Town
and in southern Sweden it is safe
to bet that this is likely to be
an old form.

That the new — or very old
— insect from northern Califor-
nia should have extinct relatives
in the Baltic amber was quite
logical. Zoologists speak about a

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

79

“relic fauna” when they come
across such a case. The scientific
name given to the new discovery
is Tricholepidion gertschi, the
second part of the name honoring
its discoverer. The insect is, like
all Thysanura, not large. Its body
measures 12 millimeters in length
when fully grown. The antennae
are nine millimeters long and the
three caudal appendages 14 milli-
meters. The total length, from the
tip of the antennae to the tip of
the appendages is, therefore, 35
millimeters or about 1.4 inches.

Of course there is no “practi-
cal” value to the discovery.

But there is a strange feeling
of wonder that one finds around
such a case.

I don’t know how many people
walk around in the forests of the
California Coast Range. But even
if it is not a place where hikers
are common thousands of people
must have wandered around
there, completely unaware of
what was hiding under the bark
of the fallen logs on which they
may have sat to rest. When hear-
ing of such a case the next
thought is always what else
might be in hiding — or not even
really hiding, but protected by
not being recognized as some-
thing unusual by most people.
And the thought after that is that
such a relic might easily become
extinct without even having been
“discovered.”

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

In a recent issue you supplied
a list of the earliest known and
therefore presumably largest as-
teroids. This list made me wonder
about the nearest stars. I know,
of course, that Alpha Centauri is
the nearest star but it is not
visible from New Jersey where I
live. Which is the nearest star I
can see from my home in New
Jersey?

Dorothy Steinfeld,

East Orange, N. J.

The nearest star you can see
from New Jersey is the one com-
monly known as the Sun. Alpha
Centauri is only the second near-
est star, after our sun. Having
gotten this customary correction
off my chest I can proceed to
answer what you really meant.
The nearest naked-eye star that
can be seen from the northern
hemisphere also happens to be
the brightest: Sirius. It is very
interesting that many of the
brightest stars are quite a dis-
tance away from us: Pollux 30
light years, Capella 48 light years,
Aldebaran 57 light years, Arc-
turus 38 light years and Regulus
80 light years. On the other hand
the nearest stars are by no means
the brightest, as the following
table shows:

80

GALAXY

Name or

Designation

Distance in
Light Years

Magnitude

proxima Centauri

4

11.0

Alpha Centauri

4

0.1

Barnard’s Star

6

9.7

Wolf 359

8

13.5

Luyten 726-8

8

12.5

Lalande Catalogue
No. 21,185

8

7.6

Sirius

9

-1.6

Procyon

11

1.0

As you can see, only three
(Alpha Centauri, Sirius and
Procyon) of the eight nearest
stars are even visible with the
naked eye. But these three hap-
pen to be quite bright.

Please tell me why we need
communications satellites. We
have long-range radio, we have
cables, we even have telephone
cables. What can these communi-
cations satellites do that radio,
cables and telephone cables can-
not do?

Andrew Pessowski
Chicago 51, 111.

Offhand the communications
satellites, especially the first
series of them, will not be able
to do anything that cables, es-
pecially telephone cables, can not
do. They can do better than long-
range radio, which is sometimes

disturbed by the cosmic events
which are usually dubbed “mag-
netic storms.” The wavelengths
used by the satellites will not be
subject to such disturbances. But
even the first batch of “comsats,”
as they are now called, will do
something all businessmen are
looking forward to. They will add
new channels. Consider: if a New
York company has a branch of-
fice in London, or vice versa, their
office hours overlap by just two
hours. All business which con-
cerns both must be transacted in
these two hours, and everybody
scrambles for this two-hour slot.
If the English firm has a branch
office in your city, Chicago, the
office hour overlap will be just
one hour. There is one more fac-
tor which nobody mentions much
because it is difficult to give fig-
ures, but “comsats” will be cheap-
en then additional cables. Besides
cables don’t go everywhere. The
satellite sliortwave does.

I read just recently that some
of our artificial satellites are ex-
pected to stay in orbit for 50 or
100 or even more years. How is
this possible? Aren’t they all in-
side Roche’s limit? Why don’t
they break up? Or has Roche’s
limit been disproved?

Arthur T. A. Wallace

The Bronx 53, N. Y.

There is hardly any concept

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

81

that has been as much misunder-
stood than “Roche’s Limit” and
is as popular at the same time.
I get an average of one letter per
week which either asks about it
or else quotes it. Roche’s limit is
always interpreted to mean that
no satellite can exist inside this
limit which Edouard Roche, Pro-
fessor of Mathematics at Mont-
pellier, France, placed at 2.44
planet radii, counting from the
center of the planet. In the case
of the earth this means that

Roche’s limit is about 5700 miles
from sea level. This means, j n
turn, that all artificial satellites
are well inside Roche’s limit.
Then why don’t they break up,
as reader Wallace asks? Awfully
simple; Professor Roche specified
that his “limit” applied to fluid
satellites, satellites of zero tensile
strength. Any solid body, like a
large meteoroid, or any structure,
like any artificial satellite, is not
troubled by Roche’s limit at all.

— WILLY LEY

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

FORECAST

With this issue GALAXY begins its thirteenth year, and as our birthday
present to all of us we've lined up some old favorites among the authors to
bring us new favorite stories. Next issue we have a novella by a fellow who
has been with us since Volume 1 Number 1, and almost two dozen times
since. The name is Fritz Leiber. The story is The Creature from Cleveland
Depths. Like all of Leiber's best work, this one is bright and witty, with savage
undertones. It has to do with shelters and cybernetics, but most of all it has
to do with people — people who are capable of smashing themselves against
their own dangerous ingenuity; people who can then pick up the pieces and
build something better . . . people you will be glad to meet.

f

Starting in November

If •SCIENCE FICTION

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN'S

great NEW serial

*

PODKAYNE OF MARS
DON'T MISS IT

GALAXY

Illustrated by WEST

B y BILL DOEDE

C ROUCHED in the ancient
doorway like an animal
peering out from his bur-
row, Mr. Michaelson saw the
native.

At first he was startled, think-
ing it might be someone else from
the Earth settlement who had
discovered the old city before
him. Then he saw the glint of
sun against the metallic skirt, and
relaxed.

He chuckled to himself, won-
dering with amusement what a
webfooted man was doing in an
old dead city so far from his
people. Some facts were known
about the people of Alpha Cen-
taurus II. They were not actually
natives, he recalled. They were a

The city was sacred, but not
to its gods. Michaelson was
a god — but far from sacred!

colony from the fifth planet of
the system. They were a curious
people. Some were highly intelli-
gent, though uneducated.

He decided to ignore the man
for the moment. He was far down
the ancient street, a mere speck
against the sand. There would be
plenty of time to wonder about
him.

He gazed out from his position
at the complex variety of build-
ings before him. Some were small,
obviously homes. Others were
huge with tall, frail spires stand-
ing against the pale blue sky.
Square buildings, ellipsoid, spher-
oid. Beautiful, dream-stuff bridges
connected tall, conical towers,
bridges that still swung in the
wind after half a million years.
Late afternoon sunlight shone
against ebony surfaces. The sands
of many centuries had blown
down the wide streets and filled
the doorways. Desert plants grew
from roofs of smaller buildings.

Ignoring the native, Mr.
Michaelson poked about among

CENTAURU

A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS

83

the ruins happily, exclaiming to
himself about some particular ar-
tifact, marveling at its state of-
preservation, holding it this way
and that to catch the late after-
noon sun, smiling, clucking glee-
fully. He crawled over the rubble
through old doorways half filled
with the accumulation of ages. He
dug experimentally in the sand
with his hands, like a dog, under
a roof that had weathered half a
million years of rain and sun.
Then he crawled out again,
covered with dust and cobwebs.

T HE native stood in the street
less than a hundred feet
away, waving his arms madly.
“Mr. Earthgod” he cried. “It is
sacred ground where you are
trespassing!’*

The archeologist smiled, watch-
ing the man hurry closer. He was
short, even for a native. Long
gray hair hung to his shoulders,
bobbing up and down as he
walked. He wore no shoes. The
toes of his webbed feet dragged in
the sand, making a deep trail be-
hind him. He was an old man.

“You never told us about this
old dead city,” Michaelson said,
chidingly. “Shame on you. But
never mind. I’ve found it now.
Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yes, beautiful. You will leave
now.”

“Leave?” Michaelson asked,
acting surprised as if the man

were a child. “I just got here a *
few hours ago.”

“You must go.”

“Why? Who are you?”

“I am keeper of the city.”
“You?” Michaelson laughed.
Then, seeing how serious the
native was, said, “What makes
you think a dead city needs a
keeper?”

“The spirits may return.”
Michaelson crawled out of the
doorway and stood up. He
brushed his trousers. He pointed.
“See that wall? Built of some
metal, I’d say, some alloy imper-
vious to rust and wear.”

“The spirits are angry.”

“Notice the inscriptions? Wind
has blown sand against them for
eons, and rain and sleet. But their
story is there, once we decipher
it.”

“Leave!”

The native’s lined, weathered
old face was working around the
mouth in anger. Michaelson was
almost sorry he had mocked him.
He was deadly serious.

“Look,” he said. “No spirits are
ever coming back here. Don’t you
know that? And even if they did,
spirits care nothing for old cities
half covered with sand and dirt.”
He walked away from the old
man, heading for another build-
ing. The sun had already gone be-
low the horizon, coloring the high
clouds. He glanced backward.
The webfoot was following.

GALAXY

“Mr. Earthgod!” the webfoot
cried, so sharply that Michaelson
stopped. “You must not touch,
n0 t walk upon, not handle. Your
step may destroy the home of
some ancient spirit. Your breath
may cause one iota of change and
a spirit may lose his way in the
darkness. Go quickly now, or be
killed.”

H E turned and walked off, not
lookipg back.

Michaelson stood in the an-
cient street, tall, gaunt, feet
planted wide, hands in pockets,
watching the webfoot until he was
out of sight beyond a huge circu-
lar building. There was a man
to watch. There was one of the
intelligent ones. One look into the
alert old eyes had told him that.

Michaelson shook his head,
and went about satisfying his
curiosity. He entered buildings
without thought of roofs falling
in, or decayed floors dropping
from under his weight. He began
to collect small items, making a
pile of them in the street. An
ancient bowl, metal untouched by
the ages. A statue of a man, one
foot high, correct to the minutest
detail, showing how identical
they had been to Earthmen. He
found books still standing on
ancient shelves but was afraid to
touch them without tools.

Darkness came swiftly and he
was forced out into the street.

He stood there alone feeling
the age of the place. Even the
smell of age was in the air. Silver
moonlight from the two moons
filtered through clear air down
upon the ruins. The city lay now
in darkness, dead and still, wait-
ing for morning so it could lie
dead and still in the sun.

There was no hurry to be going
home, although he was alone, al-
though this was Alpha Centaurus
II with many unknowns, many
dangers . . . although home was
a very great distance away. There
was no one back there to worry
about him.

His wife had died many years
ago back on Earth. No children.
His friends in the settlement
would not look for him for anoth-
er day at least. Anyway, the tiny
cylinder, buried in flesh behind
his ear, a thing of mystery and
immense power, could take him
home instantly, without effort
save a flicker of thought.

“You did not leave, as I asked
you.”

Michaelson whirled around at
the sound of the native’s voice.
Then he relaxed. He said, “You
shouldn’t sneak up on a man like
that.”

“You must leave, or I will be
forced to kill you. I do not want
to kill you, but if I must . . .” He
made a clucking sound deep in
the throat. “The spirits are angry.”

“Nonsense, Superstition! But

84

A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS

85

never mind. You have been here
longer than I. Tell me, what are
those instruments in the rooms?
It looks like a clock but I’m cer-
tain it had some other function.”
“What rooms?”

“Oh, come now. The small
rooms back there. Look like they
were bedrooms.”

“I do not know.” The webfoot
drew closer. Michaelson decided
he was sixty or seventy years old,
at least.

“You’ve been here a long time.
You are intelligent, and you must
be educated, the way you talk.
That gadget looks like a time-
piece of some sort. What is it?
What does it measure?”

“I insist that you go.” The web-
foot held something in his hand.

“No.” Michaelson looked off
down the street, trying to ignore
the native, trying to feel the life
of the city as it might have been.

UV^OU ARE sensitive,” the
native said in his ear. “It
takes a sensitive god to feel the
spirits moving in the houses and
walking in these old streets.”
“Say it any way you want to.
This is the most fascinating thing
I’ve ever seen. The Inca’s treas-
ure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyp-
tian tombs — none can hold a
candle to this.”

“Mr. Earthgod . . .”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not a
god, and you know it.”

The old man shrugged. “It ; s
not an item worthy of dispute
Those names you mention, are
they the names of gods?”

He chuckled. “In a way, y es
What is your name?”

“Maota.”

“You must help me, Maota,
These things must be preserved.
We’ll build a museum, right here
in the street. No, over there on
the hill just outside the city. We’ll
collect all the old writings and
perhaps we may decipher them.
Think of it, Maota! To read pages
written so long ago and think
their thoughts. We’ll put every-
thing under glass. Build and
evacuate chambers to stop the
decay. Catalogue, itemize . . .”
Michaelson was warming up to
his subject, but Maota shook his
head like a waving palm frond
and stamped his feet.

“You will leave now.”

“Can’t you see? Look at the
decay. These things are priceless.
They must be preserved. Future
generations will thank us.”

“Do you mean,” the old man
asked, aghast, “that you want
others to come here? You know
the city abhors the sound of alien
voices. Those who lived here may
return one day! They must not
find their city packaged and pre-
served and laid out on shelves for
the curious to breathe their foul
breaths upon. You will leave.
Now!”

86

GALAXY

‘‘N°” Michaelson was adamant.
|<}, e rock of Gibraltar.

Maota hit him, quickly, pas-
sionately, and dropped the weap-
on beside his body. He turned
swiftly, making a swirling mark
in the sand with his heel, and
walked off toward the hills out-
side the city.

The weapon he had used was
a n ancient book. Its paper-thin
pages rustled in the wind as if an
unseen hand turned them, read-
ing, while Michaelson’s blood
trickled out from the head wound
upon the ancient street.

YJ7HEN he regained conscious-
ness the two moons, bright
sentinel orbs in the night sky, had
moved to a new position down
their sliding path. Old Maota’s
absence took some of the weird-
ness and fantasy away. It seemed
a more practical place now.

The gash in his head was pain-
ful, throbbing with quick, short
hammer-blows synchronized with
his heart beats. But there was a
new determination in him. If it
was a fight that the old webfooted
fool wanted, a fight he would get.
The cylinder flicked him, at his
command, across five hundred
miles of desert and rocks to a
small creek he remembered. Here
he bathed his head in cool water
until all the caked blood was dis-
solved from his hair. Feeling bet-
ter, he went back.

The wind had turned cool.
Michaelson shivered, wishing he
had brought a coat. The city was
absolutely still except for small
gusts of wind sighing through the
frail spires. The ancient book still
lay in the sand beside the dark
spot of blood. He stooped over
and picked it up.

It was light, much lighter than
most Earth books. He ran a hand
over the binding. Smooth it was,
untouched by time or climate. He
squinted at the pages, tilting the
book to catch the bright moon-
light, but the writing was alien.
He touched the page, ran his fore-
finger over the writing.

Suddenly he sprang back. The
book fell from his hands.

“God. in heaven!” he exclaimed.

He had heard a voice. He
looked around at the old build-
ings, down the length of the an-
cient street. Something strange
about the voice. Not Maota. Not
his tones. Not his words. Satisfied
that no one was near, he stooped
and picked up the book again.

“Good God!” he said aloud. It
was the book talking. His fingers
had touched the writing again. It
was not a voice, exactly, but a
stirring in his mind, like a strange
language heard for the first time.

A talking book. What other sur-
prises were in the city? Tall,
fragile buildings laughing at time
and weather. A clock measuring
God-knows-what. If such wonders

A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS

87

remained, what about those al-
ready destroyed? One could only
guess at the machines, the gad-
gets, the artistry already decayed
and blown away to mix forever
with the sand.

I must preserve it, he thought,
whether Maota likes it or not.
They say these people lived half a
million years ago. A long time.
Let’s see, now. A man lives one
hundred years on the average.
Five thousand lifetimes.

And all you do is touch a book,
and a voice jumps across all those
years!

He started off toward the tall
building he had examined upon
discovery of the city. His left eye-
lid began to twitch and he laid his
forefinger against the eye, press-
ing until it stopped. Then he
stooped and entered the building.
He laid the book down and tried
to take the “clock” off the wall.
It was dark in the building and
his fingers felt along the wall,
looking for it. Then he touched
it. His fingers moved over its
smooth surface. Then suddenly
he jerked his hand back with an
exclamation of amazement. Fear
ran up his spine.

The clock was warm.

He felt like running, like flick-
ing back to the settlement where
there were people and familiar
voics, for here was a thing that
should not be. Half a million
years — and here was warmth!

He touched it again, curiosity
overwhelming his fear. It was
warm. No mistake. And there was
a faint vibration, a suggestion of
power. He stood there in the dark-
ness staring off into the darkness,
trembling. Fear built up in him
until it was a monstrous thing,
drowning reason. He forgot the
power of the cylinder behind his
ear. He scrambled through the
doorway. He got up and ran down
the ancient sandy street until he
came to the edge of the city. Here
he stopped, gasping for air, feel-
ing the pain throb in his head.

Common sense said that he
should go home, that nothing
worthwhile could be accomplished
at night, that he was tired, that
he was weak from loss of blood
and fright and running. But when
Michaelson was on the trail of
important discoveries he had no
common sense.

He sat down in the darkness,
meaning to rest a moment.

%W7"HEN he awoke dawn was
^ ’ red against thin clouds in
the east.

Old Maota stood in the street
with webbed feet planted far
apart in the sand, a weapon in the
crook of his arm. It was a long
tube affair, familiar to Michael-
son.

Michaelson asked, “Did you
sleep well?”

“No.”

88

GALAXY

«I’m sorry to hear that.”
“How do you feel?”
“Fine, but my head

little.”

“Sorry,” Maota said.

“For what?”

“For hitting you. Pain is not

for gods like you.”

Michaelson relaxed somewhat.
“What kind of man are you? First
you try to break my skull, then
you apologize.”

“I abhor pain. I should have
killed you outright.”

He thought about that for a
moment, eyeing the weapon.

It looked in good working
order. Slim and shiny and inno-
cent, it looked like a glorified
African blowgun. But he was not
deceived by its appearance. It
was a deadly weapon.

“Well,” he said, “before you kill
me, tell me about the book.” He
held it up for Maota to see.
“What about the book?”

“What kind of book is it?”
“What does Mr. Earthgod
mean, what kind of book? You
have seen it. It is like any other
book, except for the material and
the fact that it talks.”

“No, no. I mean, what’s in it?”
“Poetry.”

“Poetry? For God’s sake, why
poetry? Why not mathematics or
history? Why not tell how to
make the metal of the book itself?
Now there is a subject worthy of
a book.”

A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS

Maota shook his head. “One
does not study a dead culture to
learn how they made things, but
how they thought. But we are
wasting time. I must kill you now,
so I can get some rest.”

The old man raised the gun.

44 Vjf/'AIT! You forget that I
” also have a weapon.” He
pointed to the spot behind his ear
where the cylinder was buried. “I
can move faster than you can fire
the gun.”

Maota nodded. “I have heard
how you travel. It does not mat-
ter. I will kill you anyway.”

“I suggest we negotiate.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Maota looked off toward the
hills, old eyes filmed from years
of sand and wind, leather skin
lined and pitted. The hills stood
immobile, brown-gray, already
shimmering with heat, impotent.

“Why not?” Michaelson re-
peated.

“Why not what?” Maota
dragged his eyes back.

“Negotiate.”

“No.” Maota’s eyes grew hard
as steel. They stood there in the
sun, not twenty feet apart, hating
each other. The two moons, very
pale and far away on the western
horizon, stared like two bottom-
less eyes.

“All right, then. At least it’s a
quick death. I hear that thing just

89

disintegrates a man. Pfft! And
that’s that.”

Michaelson prepared himself
to move if the old man’s finger
slid closer toward the firing stud.
The old man raised the gun.

“Wait!”

“Now what?”

“At least read some of the
book to me before I die, then.”

The gun wavered. “I am not an

unreasonable man,” the webfoot
said.

Michaelson stepped forward,
extending his arm with the book.

“No, stay where you are. Throw
it.”

“This book is priceless. You
just don’t go throwing such valu-
able items around.”

“It won’t break. Throw it.”

Michaelson threw the book. It

landed at Maota’s feet, spouting
sand against his leg. He shifted
the weapon, picked up the book
and leafed through it, raising his
head in a listening attitude,
searching for a suitable passage.
Michaelson heard the thin, metal-
lic pages rustle softly. He could
have jumped and seized the weap-
on at that moment, but his desire
to hear the book was strong.

Maota read, Michaelson
^ listened. The cadence was
different, the syntax confusing.
But the thoughts were there. It
might have been a professor back
on Earth reading to his students.
Keats, Shelley, Browning. These
people were human, with human
thoughts and aspirations.

The old man stopped reading.
He squatted slowly, keeping

GALAXY

A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS

90

91

Michaelson in sight, and laid the
book face up in the sand. Wind
moved the pages.

“See?” he said. “The spirits
read. They must have been great
readers, these people. They drink
the book, as if it were an elixir.
See how gentle! They lap at the
pages like a new kitten tasting
milk.”

Michaelson laughed. “You cer-
tainly have an imagination.”

“What difference does it
make?” Maota cried, suddenly
angry. “You want to close up all
these things in boxes for a poster-
ity who may have no slightest
feeling or appreciation. I want to
leave the city as it is, for spirits
whose existence I cannot prove.”

The old man’s eyes were furi-
ous now, deadly. The gun came
down directly in line with the
Earthman’s chest. The gnarled
finger moved.

Michaelson, using the power of
the cylinder behind his ear,
jumped behind the old webfoot.
To Maota it seemed that he had
flicked out of existence like a
match blown out. The next in-
stant Michaelson spun him
around and hit him. It was an in-
expert fist, belonging to an arche-
ologist, not a fighter. But Maota
was an old man.

He dropped in the sand, mo-
mentarily stunned. Michaelson
bent over to pick up the gun and
the old man, feeling it slip from

his fingers, hung on and was
pulled to his feet.

They struggled for possession
of the gun, silently, gasping, kick-
ing sand. Faces grew red. Lip s
drew back over Michaelson’s
white teeth, over Maota’s pink,
toothless gums. The dead city’s
fragile spires threw impersonal
shadows down where they fought.

Then quite suddenly a finger or
hand — neither knew whose finger
or hand — touched the firing stud.

There was a hollow, whooshing
sound. Both stopped still, realiz-
ing the total destruction they
might have caused.

“It only hit the ground,”
Michaelson said.

A black, charred hole, two feet
in diameter and — they could not
see how deep — stared at them.

Maota let go and sprawled in
the sand. “The book!” he cried.
“The book is gone!”

“No! We probably covered it
with sand while we fought.”

DOTH men began scooping
sand in their cupped hands,
digging frantically for the book.
Saliva dripped from Maota’s
mouth, but he didn’t know or care.

Finally they stopped, exhaust-
ed. They had covered a substan-
tial area around the hole. They
had covered the complete area
where they had been.

“We killed it,” the old man
moaned.

2 U * '

92

GALAXY

“It was just a book. Not alive,
y ou know.”

“How do you know?” The old
man's pale eyes were filled with
tears. “It talked and it sang. In
a way, it had a soul. Sometimes
on long nights I used to imagine it
loved me, for taking care of it.”
“There are other books. We’ll
get another.”

Maota shook his head. “There
are no more.”

“But I’ve seen them. Down
there in the square building.”

“Not poetry. Books, yes, but
not poetry. That was the only
book with songs.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You killed it!” Maota sudden-
ly sprang for the weapon, lying
forgotten in the sand. Michaelson
put his foot on it and Maota was
too weak to tear it loose. He could
only weep out his rage.

When he could talk again,
Maota said, “I am sorry, Mr.
Earthgod. I’ve disgraced myself.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Michaelson
helped him to his feet. “We fight
for some reasons, cry for others.
A priceless book is a good reason
for either.”

“Not for that. For not winning.

I should have killed you last night
when I had the chance. The gods
give us chances and if we don’t
take them we lose forever.”

"I told you before! We are on
the same side. Negotiate. Have
you never heard of negotiation?”

“You are a god,” Maota said.
“One does not negotiate with gods.
One either loves them, or kills
them.”

“That’s another thing. I am not
a god. Can’t you understand?”

“Of course you are.” Maota
looked up, very sure. “Mortals
cannot step from star to star like
crossing a shallow brook.”

“No, no. I don’t step from one
star to another. An invention does
that. Just an invention. I carry it
with me. It’s a tiny thing. No one
would ever guess it has such
power. So you see, I’m human,
just like you. Hit me and I hurt.
Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate.
I was born. Some day I’ll die. See?
I’m human. Just a human with a
machine. No more than that.”

1VTAOTA laughed, then sobered
quickly. “You lie.”

“No.”

“If I had this machine, could I
travel as you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll kill you and take
yours.”

“It would not work for you.”

“Why?”

“Each machine is tailored for
each person.”

The old man hung his head.
He looked down into the black,
charred hole. He walked all
around the hole. He kicked at the
sand, looking half-heartedly again
for the book.

A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS

93

“Look,” Michaelson said. “I’m
sure I’ve convinced you that I’m
human. Why not have a try at
negotiating our differences?”

He looked up. His expressive
eyes, deep, resigned, studied
Michaelson’s face. Finally he
shook his head sadly. “When we
first met I hoped we could think
the ancient thoughts together.
But our paths diverge. We have
finished, you and I.”

He turned and started off,
shoulders slumped dejectedly.

Michaelson caught up to him.
“Are you leaving the city?”

“No.”

“Where are you going?”
“Away. Far away.” Maota
looked off toward the hills, eyes
distant.

“Don’t be stupid, old man. How
can you go far away and not
leave the city?”

“There are many directions.
You would not understand.”
“East. West. North. South. Up.
Down.”

“No, no. There is another di-
rection. Come, if you must see.”
Michaelson followed him far
down the street. They came to a
section of the city he had not
seen before. Buildings were small-
er, spires dwarfed against larger
structures. Here a path was
packed in the sand, leading to a
particular building.

Michaelson said, “This is where
you live?”

“Yes.”

Maota went inside, Michaelson 1
stood in the entrance and looked j
around. The room was clean, f Ur „ ^
nished with hand made chairs and '
a bed. Who is this old man, he
thought, far from his people, li v . ]
ing alone, choosing a life of soli-
tude among ancient ruins but not
touching them? Above the bed a
“clock” was fastened to the wall.
Michaelson remembered his
fright — thinking of the warmth
where warmth should not be.

Maota pointed to it.

“You asked about this ma-
chine,” he said. “Now I will tell
you.” He laid his hand against it.
“Here is power to follow another
direction.”

ly/ldCHAELSON tested one of
the chairs to see if it would
hold his weight, then sat down.
His curiosity about the instrument
was colossal, but he forced a
short laugh. “Maota, you are com-
plex. Why not stop all this mys-
tery nonsense and tell me about
it? You know more about it than
I.”

“Of course.” Maota smiled a
toothless, superior smile. “What
do you suppose happened to this
race?”

“You tell me.”

“They took the unknown direc-
tion. The books speak of it. I don’t
know how the instrument works,
but one thing is certain. The race

94

2 U v

GALAXY

n ot die out, as a species be-

comes

extinct.”

Michaelson was amused, but
interested. “Something like a
fourth dimension?”

“I don’t know. I only know that
w jth this instrument there is no
death. I have read the books that
speak of this race, this wonderful
people who conquered all disease,
w ho explored all the mysteries of
science, who devised this machine
to cheat death. See this button
here on the face of the instru-
ment? Press the button, and . . .”

“And what?”

“I don’t know, exactly. But I
have lived many years. I have
walked the streets of this city and
wondered, and wanted to press
the button. Now I will do so.”
Quickly the old man, still smil-
ing, pressed the button. A high-
pitched whine filled the air, just
within audio range. Steady for a
moment, it then rose in pitch
passing beyond hearing quickly.

The old man’s knees buckled.
He sank down, fell over the bed,
lay still. Michaelson touched him
cautiously, then examined him
more carefully. No question about
it.

The old man was dead.

WHEELING depressed and alone,
Michaelson found a desert
knoll outside the city overlooking
the tall spires that shone in the
sunlight and gleamed in the

A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS

moonlight. He made a stretcher,
rolled the old man’s body on to
it and dragged it down the long
ancient street and up the knoll.

Here he buried him.

But it seemed a waste of time.
Somehow he knew beyond any
doubt that the old native and his
body were completely disassoci-
ated in some sense more complete
than death.

In the days that followed he
gave much thought to the “clock.”
He came to the city every day.
He spent long hours in the huge
square building with the books.
He learned the language by sheer
bulldog determination. Then he
searched the books for informa-
tion about the instrument.

Finally after many weeks, long
after the winds had obliterated
all evidence of Maota’s grave on
the knoll, Michaelson made a de-
cision. He had to know if the
machine would work for him.

And so one afternoon when the
ancient spires threw long shadows
over the sand he walked down the
long street and entered the old
man’s house. He stood before the
instrument, trembling, afraid, but
determined. He pinched his eyes
shut tight like a child and pressed
the button.

The high-pitched whine started.

Complete, utter silence. Void.
Darkness. Awareness and mem-
ory, yes; nothing else. Then
Maota’s chuckle came. No sound,

95

an impression only like the voice
from the ancient book. Where was
he? There was no left or right, up
or down. Maota was everywhere,
nowhere.

“Look!” Maota’s thought was
directed at him in this place of
no direction. “Think of the city
and you will see it.”

Michaelson did, and he saw the
city beyond, as if he were looking
through a window. And yet he
was in the city looking at his own
body.

Maota’s chuckle again. “The
city will remain as it is. You did
not win after all.”

“Neither did you.”

“But this existence has com-
pensations,” Maota said. “You
can be anywhere, see anywhere
on this planet. Even on your
Earth.”

Michaelson felt a great sadness,
seeing his body lying across the
old, home made bed. He looked
closer. He sensed a vibration or
life force — he didn’t stop to
define it — in his body. Why was
his dead body different from Old
Maota’s? Could it be that there
was some thread stretching from
the reality of his body to his
present state?

“I don’t like your thoughts,”
Maota said. “No one can go back.
I tried. I have discussed it with
many who are not presently in
communication with you. No one
can go back.”

Michaelson decided he would 1
try.

467VO!” Maota’s thought was
" prickled with fear and
anger.

Michaelson did not know how
to try, but he remembered the
cylinder and gathered all the
force of his mind in spite of
Maota’s protests, and gave his
most violent command.

At first he thought it didn’t
work. He got up and looked
around, then it struck him. He
was standing up!

The cylinder. He knew it was
the cylinder. That was the differ-
ence between himself and Maota.
When he used the cylinder, that
was where he went, the place
where Maota was now. It was a
door of some kind, leading to a
path of some kind where distance
was non-existent. But the “clock”
was a mechanism to transport
only the mind to that place.

To be certain of it, he pressed
the button again, with the same
result as before. He saw his own
body fall down. He felt Maota’s
presence.

“You devil!” Maota’s thought-
scream was a sword of hate and
anger, irrational suddenly, like
a person who knows his loss is
irrevocable. “I said you were a
god. I said you were a god. I,
said you were a god . . . !”

— BILL DOEDE

By JIM HARMON

Illustrated by WEST

Every lonely man tries to
make friends. Manet just
didn't know when to stop l

HOW TO MAKE

FRIENDS

MANET was

W ILLIAM
alone.

In the beginning, he
had seen many advantages to be-
ing alone. It would give him an
unprecedented opportunity to
once and for all correlate
ness to the point of madness,
see how long it would take
to start slavering and clawing
pin-ups from the magazines,
begin teaching himself classes
philosophy consisting of intermi-
nable lectures to a bored and
captive audience of one.

He would be able to measure
the qualities of peace and decide
whether it was really better than

GALAXY

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS

96

war, he would be able to get as
fat and as dirty as he liked, he
would be able to live more like
an animal and think more like a
god than any man for generations.

But after a shorter time than
he expected, it all got to be a
tearing bore. Even the waiting to
go crazy part of it.

Not that he was going to have
any great long wait of it. He was
already talking to himself, mak-
ing verbal notes for his lectures,
and he had cut out a picture of
Annie Oakley from an old book.
He tacked it up and winked at
it whenever he passed that way.

Lately she was winking back at
him.

Loneliness was a physical
weight on his skull. It peeled the
flesh from his arms and legs and
sandpapered his self-pity to a fine
sensitivity.

No one on Earth was as lonely
as William Manet, and even
William Manet could only be this
lonely on Mars.

Manet was Atmosphere Seeder
Station 131-47’s own human.

All Manet had to do was sit in
the beating aluminum heart in
the middle of the chalk desert
and stare out, chin cupped in
hands, at the flat, flat pavement
of dirty talcum, at the stars
gleaming as hard in the black sky
as a starlet’s capped teeth . . .
stars two of which were moons
and one of which was Earth. He

had to do nothing else. The whole*
gimcrack was cybernetically COn
trolled, entirely automatic.
one was needed here — no hu-
man being, at least.

The Workers’ Union was a
pretty small pressure group, but
it didn’t take much to pressure
the Assembly. Featherbedding
had been carefully specified, in-
cluding an Overseer for each of
the Seeders to honeycomb Mars,
to prepare its atmosphere for
colonization.

They didn’t give tests to find
well-balanced, well-integrated
people for the job. Well-balanced,
well-integrated men weren’t go-
ing to isolate themselves in a
useless job. They got, instead,
William Manet and his fellows.

The Overseers were to stay as
long as the job required. Passen-
ger fare to Mars was about one
billion dollars. They weren’t
providing commuter service for
night shifts. They weren’t pro-
viding accommodations for cou-
ples when the law specified only
one occupant. They weren’t
providing fuel (at fifty million
dollars a gallon) for visits be-
tween the various Overseers.
They weren’t very providential.

But it was two hundred thou-
sand a year in salary, and it of-
fered wonderful opportunities.

It gave William Manet an op-
portunity to think he saw a
spaceship making a tailfirst land-

98

GALAXY

11*6 on the table of the desert, its
tail burning as bright as envy.

M ANET suspected hallucina-
tion, but in an existence with
a fl the pallid dispassion of a re-
quited love he was happy to wel-
come dementia. Sometimes he
even manufactured it. Sometimes
he would run through the arteries
0 f the factory and play that it had
suddenly gone mad hating human
beings, and was about to close
down its bulkheads on him as sure
as the Engineers’ Thumb and
bale up the pressure-dehydrated
digest, making so much stall
flooring of him. He ran until he
dropped with a kind of climaxing
release of terror.

So Manet put on the pressure
suit he had been given because
he would never need it, and
marched out to meet the visiting
spaceship.

He wasn’t quite clear how he
came from walking effortlessly
across the Martian plain that had
all the distance-perpetuating
qualities of a kid’s crank movie
machine to the comfortable in-
terior of a strange cabin. Not a
ship s cabin but a Northwoods
cabin.

The black and orange Hallo-
we’en log charring in the slate
stone fireplace seemed real. So
did the lean man with the smiling
mustache painted with the ran-
dom designs of the fire, standing

before the horizontal pattern of
chinked wall.

“Need a fresher?” the host
inquired.

Manet’s eyes wondered down
to heavy water tumbler full of
rich, amber whiskey full of
sparks from the hearth. He
stirred himself in the comfort-
ingly warm leather chair. “No,
no, I’m fine.” He let the word
hang there for examination.
“Pardon me, but could you tell
me just what place this is?”

The host shrugged. It was the
only word for it. “Whatever place
you choose it to be, so long as
you’re with Trader Tom. ‘Service,’
that’s my motto. It is a way of
life with me.”

“Trader Tom? Service?”

“Yes! That’s it exactly. It’s me
exactly. Trader Tom Service —
Serving the Wants of the Space-
man Between the Stars. Of
course, ‘stars’ is poetic. Any point
of light in the sky in a star. We
service the planets.”

Manet took the tumbler in
both hands and drank. It was
good whiskey, immensely power-
ful. “The government wouldn’t
pay for somebody serving the
wants of spacemen,” he exploded.

“Ah,” Trader Tom said, cau-
tionary. He moved nearer the
fire and warmed his hands and
buttocks. “Ah, but I am not a
government service. I represent
free enterprise.”

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS

99

(, i lVT ONSENSE,” Manet said.

“No group of private in-
dividuals can build a spaceship.
It takes a combine of nations.”
“But remember only that busi-
nessmen are reactionary. It’s well-
known. Ask anyone on the street.
Businessmen are reactionary
even beyond the capitalistic
system. Money is a fiction that
exists mostly on paper. They play
along on paper to get paper things,
but to get real things they can
forego the papers. Comprehend,
mon ami? My businessmen have
gone back Jo the barter system.
Between them, they have the raw
materials, the trained men, the
man-hours to make a spaceship.
So they make it. Damned reac-
tionaries, all of my principals.”
“I don’t believe you,” Manet
stated flatly. His conversation
had grown blunt with disuse.
“What possible profit could your
principals turn from running a
trading ship among scattered ex-
ploration posts on the planets?
What could you give us that a
benevolent government doesn’t
already supply us with? And if
there was anything, how could we
pay for it? My year’s salary
wouldn’t cover the transportation
costs of this glass of whiskey.”
“Do you find it good whiskey?”
“Very good.”

“Excellent?”

“Excellent, if you prefer.”

“I only meant — but never

mind. We give you what y 0u
want. As for paying for it — w jj
forget about the payment. You
may apply for a Trader Tom
Credit Card.”

“And I could buy anything that
I wanted with it?” Manet de-
manded. “That’s absurd. I’d never
be able to pay for it.”

“That’s it precisely!” Trader
Tom said with enthusiasm. “You
never pay for it. Charges are
merely deducted from you r
estate.”

“But I may leave no estate!”
Trader Tom demonstrated his
peculiar shrug. “All businesses
operate on a certain margin of
risk. That is our worry.”

jVT ANET finished the mellow
whiskey and looked into the
glass. It seemed to have been
polished clean. “What do you
have to offer?”

“Whatever you want?”
Irritably, “How do I know
what I want until I know what
you have?”

“You know.”

“I know? All right, I know.
You don’t have it for sale.”

“Old chap, understand if you
please that I do not only sell. I
am a trader — Trader Tom. I
trade with many parties. There
are, for example . . . extraterres-
trials.”

“Folk legend!”

“On the contrary, mon cher,

GALAXY

t he only reality it lacks is politi-
cal reality. The Assembly could
n0 longer justify their disposition
0 f the cosmos if it were known
they were dealing confiscation
w ithout representation. Come,
tell me what you want.”

Manet gave in to it. “I want to
be not alone,” he said.

“Of course,” Trader Tom re-
plied, “I suspected. It is not so
unusual, you know. Sign here.
And here. Two copies. This is
yours. Thank you so much.”
Manet handed back the pen
and stared at the laminated card
in his hand.

TRADER TOM CREDIT CARD

Good for Anything
A-I 9*8*7*6*5*4*3*2*****

WM. MoNeT

(Sign Here)

/ — fader / — om

Trader Tom

When he looked up from the
card, Manet saw the box. Trader
Tom was pushing it across the
floor towards him.

The box had the general dimen-
sions of a coffin, but it wasn’t
wood — only brightly illustrated
cardboard. There was a large
four-color picture on the lid show-
ing men, women and children
moving through a busy city

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS

street. The red and blue letters
said:

LIFO

The Socialization Kit

“It is commercialized,” Trader
Tom admitted with no little cha-
grin. “It is presented to appeal to
a twelve-year-old child, an erotic,
aggressive twelve-year-old, the
typical sensie goer — but that is
reality. It offends men of good
taste like ourselves, yet some-
times it approaches being art. We
must accept it.”

“What’s the cost?” Manet
asked. “Before I accept it, I have
to know the charges.”

“You never know the cost.
Only your executor knows that.
It’s the Trader Tom plan.”

“Well, is it guaranteed?”

“There are no guarantees,”
Trader Tom admitted. “But I’ve
never had any complaints yet.”
“Suppose I’m the first?” Manet
suggested reasonably.

“You won’t be,” Trader Tom
said. “I won’t pass this way
again.”

jyjANET didn’t open the box.

He let it fade quietly in the
filtered but still brilliant sunlight
near a transparent wall.

Manet puttered around the
spawning monster, trying to
brush the copper taste of the sta-
tion out of his mouth in the

100

101

mornings, talking to himself,
winking at Annie Oakley, and
waiting to go mad.

Finally, Manet woke up one
morning. He lay in the sheets of
his bunk, suppressing the urge to
go wash his hands, and came at
last to the conclusion that, after
all the delay, he was mad.

So he went to open the box.

The cardboard lid seemed to
have become both brittle and
rotten. It crumbled as easily as
ideals. But Manet was old enough
to remember the boxes Japanese
toys came in when he was a boy,
and was not alarmed.

The contents were such a
glorious pile of junk, of bottles
from old chemistry sets, of pieces
from old Erector sets, of name-
less things and unremembered
antiques from neglected places,
that it seemed too good to
have been assembled commer-
cially. It was the collection of
lifetime.

On top of everything was a
paperbound book, the size of the
Reader’s Digest, covered in rip-
pled gray flexiboard. The title
was stamped in black on the
spine and cover: The Making of
Friends.

Manet opened the book and,
turning one blank page, found
the title in larger print and
slightly amplied: The Making of
Friends and Others. There was
no author listed. A further line of

information stated: “A Manual
for Lifo, The Socialization Kit.”
At the bottom of the title page,
the publisher was identified as:
LIFO KIT CO, LTD, SYRA-
CUSE.

The unnumbered first chapter
was headed Your First Friend.

Before you go further, first find
the Modifier in your kit. This is
vital.

He quickly riffled through the
pages. Other Friends, Authority,
A Companion . . . Then The Final
Model. Manet tried to flip past
this section, but the pages after
the sheet labeled The Final
Model were stuck together. More
than stuck. There was a thick
slab of plastic in the back of the
book. The edges were ridged as
if there were pages to this section,
but they could only be the tracks
of lame ants.

Manet flipped back to page
one.

First find the Modifier in your
kit. This is vital to your entire
experiment in socialization. The
Modifier is Part #A-1 on the
Master Chart.

He prowled through the box
looking for some kind of a chart.
There was nothing that looked
like a chart inside. He retrieved
the lid and looked at its inside.

102

GALAXY

Nothing. He tipped the box and
looked at its outside. Not a thing.
There was always something
missing from kits. Maybe even
the Modifier itself.

He read on, and probed and
scattered the parts in the long
box. He studied the manual in-
tently and groped out with his
free hand.

The toe bone was connected to
the foot bone. . .

T HE Red King sat smugly in
his diagonal corner.

The Black King stood two
places away, his top half tipsy
in frustration.

The Red King crabbed side-
ways one square.

The Black King pounced for-
ward one space.

The Red King advanced back-
wards to face the enemy.

The Black King shuffled side-
ways.

The Red King followed. . .
Uselessly.

“Tie game,” Ronald said.

“Tie game,” Manet said.

“Let’s talk,” Ronald said
cheerfully. He was always cheer-
ful.

Cheerfulness was a personality
trait Manet had thumbed out for
him. Cheerful. Submissive. Co-
operative. Manet had selected
these factors in order to make
Ronald as different a person from
himself as possible.

“The Korean-American War }
was the greatest of all wars,” 1
Ronald said pontifically.

“Only in the air,” Manet cor- j
rected him.

Intelligence was one of the
factors Manet had punched to
suppress. Intelligence. Aggressive-
ness. Sense of perfection. Ronald
couldn’t know any more than
Manet, but he could (and did)
know less. He had seen to that
when his own encephalograph
matrix had programmed Ronald’s
feeder.

“There were no dogfights in
Korea,” Ronald said.

“I know.”

“The dogfight was a combat of
hundreds of planes in a tight
area, the last of which took place
near the end of the First World
War. The aerial duel, sometimes
inaccurately referred to as a
‘dogfight’ was not seen in Korea
either. The pilots at supersonic
speeds only had time for single
passes at the enemy. Still, I be-
lieve, contrary to all experts, that
this took greater skill, man more
wedded to machine, than the lei-
surely combats of World War
One.”

“I know.”

“Daniel Boone was still a crack
shot at eight-five. He was
said to be warm, sincere, modest,
truthful, respected and rheu-
matic.”

“I know.”

104

GALAXY

ANET knew it all. He had
heard it all before,
fie was so damned sick of hear-
jj,g about Korean air battles,
paniel Boone, the literary quali-
fies of ancient sports fiction mag-
azines, the painting of Norman
Rockwell, New York swing, ad
n auseum. What a narrow band of
interests! With the whole uni-
verse to explore in thought and
concept, why did he have to be
trapped with such an unoriginal
human being?

Of course, Ronald wasn’t an
original human being. He was a
copy.

Manet had been interested in
the Fabulous Forties — Lt.
“Hoot” Gibson, Sam Merwin
tennis stories, Saturday Evening
Post covers — when he had first
learned of them, and he had
learned all about them. He had
firm opinions on all these.

He yearned for someone to
challenge him — to say that
Dime Sports had been nothing
but a cheap yellow rag and, why,
Sewanee Review, there had been
a magazine for you.

Manet’s only consolidation was
that Ronald’s tastes were lower
than his own. He patriotically in-
sisted that the American Sabre
Jet was superior to the Mig. He
maintained with a straight face
that Tommy Dorsey was a better
band man than Benny Goodman.
Ronald was a terrific jerk.

“Ronald,” Manet said “you are
a terrific jerk.”

Ronald leaped up immediately
and led with his right.

Manet blocked it deftly and
threw a right cross.

Ronald blocked it deftly, and
drove in a right to the navel.

The two men separated and,
puffing like steam locomotives
passing the diesel works, closed
again.

Ronald leaped forward and
lead with his right.

Manet stepped inside the
swing and lifted an uppercut to
the ledge of Ronald’s jaw.

Ronald pinwheeled to the floor.

He lifted his bruised head from
the deck and worked his red-
dened mouth. “Had enough?” he
asked Manet.

Manet dropped his fists to his
sides and turned away. “Yes.”

Ronald hopped up lightly. “An-
other checkers, Billy Boy?”

“No.”

“Okay. Anything you want,
William, old conquerer.”

Manet scrunched up inside
himself in impotent fury.

Ronald was maddeningly co-
operative and peaceful. He would
even get in a fist fight to avoid
trouble between them. He would
do anything Manet wanted him
to do. He was so utterly damned
stupid.

Manet’s eyes orbitted towards
the checkerboard.

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS

105

But if he were so much more
stupid than he, Manet, why was
it that their checker games al-
ways ended in a tie?

r | ''HE calendar said it was Spring
on Earth when the radio was
activated for a high-speed infor-
mation and entertainment trans-
mission.

The buzzer-flasher activated in
the solarium at the same time.

Manet lay stretched out on his
back, naked, in front of the trans-
parent wall.

By rolling his eyes back in his
head, Manet could see over a
hedge of eyebrows for several
hundred flat miles of white sand.

And several hundred miles of
desert could see him.

For a moment he gloried in the
blatant display of his flabby mus-
cles and patchy sunburn.

Then he sighed, rolled over to
his feet and started trudging to-
ward Communication.

He padded down the rib-ridged
matted corridor, taking his usual
small pleasure in the kaleido-
scopic effect of the spiraling re-
flections on the walls of the
tubeway.

As he passed the File Room,
he caught the sound of the pound-
ing vibrations against the stop-
pered plug of the hatch.

“Come on, Billy Buddy, let me
out of this place!”

Manet padded on down the

hall. He had, he recalled, shove<}
Ronald in there on Lincoln’s
Birthday, a minor ironic twist he
appreciated quietly. He had been
waiting in vain for Ronald to run
down ever since.

In Communication, he took a
seat and punched the slowed
down playback of the trans-
mission.

“Hello, Overseers,” the Voice
said. It was the Voice of the
B.B.C. It irritated Manet. He
never understood how the British
had got the space transmissions
ass’gnment for the English lan-
guage. He would have preferred
an American disk-jockey himself,
one who appreciated New York
swing.

“We imagine that you are most
interested in how long you shall
be required to stay at your pres-
ent stations,” said the Voice of
God’s paternal uncle. “As you on
Mars may know, there has been
much discussion as to how long
it will require to complete the
present schedule — ” there was of
course no “K” sound in the word
— “for atmosphere seeding.

“The original, non-binding esti-
mate at the time of your depart-
ure was 18.2 years. However,
determining how long it will take
our stations properly to remake
the air of Mars is a problem com-
parable to finding the age of the
Earth. Estimates change as new
factors are learned. You may re-

106

GALAXY

ca ll that three years ago the
official estimate was changed to
thirty* one years. The recent esti-
mate by certain reactionary
sources of two hundred and
seventy-four years is not an offi-
cial government estimate. The
news for you is good, if you are
becoming nostalgic for home, or
not particularly bad if you are
counting on drawing your hand-
some salary for the time spent on
Mars. We have every reason to
believe our original estimate was
substantially correct. The total
time is, within limits of error, a
flat 18 years.”

A very flat 18 years, Manet
thought as he palmed off the
recorder.

He sat there thinking about
eighteen years.

He did not switch to video for
some freshly taped westerns.

Finally, Manet went back to
the solarium and dragged the big
box out. There was a lot left in-
side.

One of those parts, one of those
bones or struts of flesh sprayers,
one of them, he now knew, was
the Modifier.

The Modifier was what he
needed to change Ronald. Or to
shut him off.

If only the Master Chart
hadn’t been lost, so he would
know what the Modifier looked
like! He hoped the Modifier itself
wasn’t lost. He hated to think of

Ronald locked in the Usher tomb
of the File Room for 18 flat years.
Long before that, he would have
worn his fists away hammering at
the hatch. Then he might start
pounding with his head. Perhaps
before the time was up he would
have worn himself down to noth-
ing whatsoever.

Manet selected the ripple-
finished gray-covered manual
from the hodgepodge, and
thought: eighteen years.

Perhaps I should have begun
here, he told himself. But I really
don’t have as much interest in’
that sort of thing as the earthier
types. Simple companionship was
all I wanted. And, he thought on,
even an insipid personality like
Ronald’s would be bearable with
certain compensations.

Manet opened the book to the
chapter headed: The Making of
a Girl.

'17’ERONICA crept up behind
T Manet and slithered her
hands up his back and over his
shoulders. She leaned forward
and breathed a moist warmth in-
to his ear, and worried the lobe
with her even white teeth.

Daniel Boone,” she sighed
huskily, “only killed three In-
dians in his life.”

“I know.”

Manet folded his arms sto-
ically and added: “Please don’t
talk.”

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS

107

She sighed her instant agree-
ment and moved her expressive
hands over his chest and up to
the hollows of his throat.

“I need a shave,” he observed.

Her hands instantly caressed
his face to prove that she liked a
rather bristly, masculine counte-
nance.

Manet elbowed Veronica away
in a gentlemanly fashion.

She made her return.

“Not now,” he instructed her.

“Whenever you say.”

He stood up and began pacing
off the dimensions of the com-
partment. There was no doubt
about it: he had been missing his
regular exercise.

“Now?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you.”

“If you were a jet pilot,” Ver-
onica said wistfully, “you would
be romantic. You would grab
love when you could. You would
never know which moment would
be last. You would make the most
of each one.”

“I’m not a jet pilot,” Manet
said. “There are no jet pilots.
There haven’t been any for gen-
erations.”

“Don’t be silly,” Veronica said.
“Who else would stop those vile
North Koreans and Red China
‘volunteers’?”

“Veronica,” he said carefully,
“the Korean War is over. It was
finished even before the last of
the jet pilots.”

“Don’t be silly,” she snapped.
“If it were over, I’d know about
it, wouldn’t I?”

She would, except that some-
how she had turned out even less
bright, less equipped with
Manet’s own store of information,
than Ronald. Whoever had built
the Lifo kit must have had
ancient ideas about what consti-
tuted appropriate “feminine”
characteristics.

“I suppose,” he said heavily,
“that you would like me to take
you back to Earth and introduce
you to Daniel Boone?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Veronica, your stupidity is
hideous.”

She lowered her long blonde
lashes on her pink cheeks. “That
is a mean thing to say to me. But
I forgive you.”

An invisible hand began press-
ing down steadily on the top of
his head until it forced a sound
out of him. “Aaaawrraagggh!
Must you be so cloyingly sweet?
Do you have to keep taking that?
Isn’t there any fight in you at
all?”

He stepped forward and back-
handed her across the jaw.

It was the first time he had
ever struck a woman, he realized
regretfully. He now knew he
should have been doing it long
ago.

Veronica sprang forward and
led with a right.

108

GALAXY

R ONALD’S cries grew louder
as Manet marched Veronica
through the corridor.

“Hear that?” he inquired, smil-
ing with clenched teeth.

“No, darling.”

Well, that was all right. He re-
membered he had once told her
to ignore the noise. She was still
following orders.

“Come on, Bill, open up the
hatch for old Ronald,” the voice
carried through sepulchrally.

“Shut up!” Manet yelled.

The voice dwindled stub-
bornly, then cut off.

A silence with a whisper of
metallic ring to it.

Why hadn’t he thought of that
before? Maybe because he se-
cretly took comfort in the sound
of an almost human voice echoing
through the station.

Manet threw back the bolt and
wheeled back the hatch.

Ronald looked just the same
as had when Manet had seen him
last. His hands didn’t seem to
have been worn away in the least.
Ronald’s lips seemed a trifle
chapped. But that probably came
not from all the shouting but
from having nothing to drink for
some months.

Ronald didn’t say anything to
Manet.

But he looked offended.

“You,” Manet said to Veronica
with a shove in the small of the
back, “inside, inside.”

Ronald sidestepped the lurch-
ing girl.

“Do you know what I’m going
to do with you? Manet de-
manded. “I’m going to lock you
up in here, and leave you for a
day, a month, a year, forever!
Now what do you think about
that?”

“If you think it’s the right
thing, dear,” Veronica said hes-
itantly.

“You know best, Willy,” Ron-
ald said uncertainly.

Manet slammed the hatch in
disgust.

Manet walked carefully down
the corridor, watching streamers
of his reflection corkscrewing into
the curved walls. He had to walk
carefully, else the artery would
roll up tight and squash him. But
he walked too carefully for this
to happen.

As he passed the File Room,
Ronald’s voice said: “In my

opinion, William, you should let
us out.”

“I,” Veronica said, “honestly
feel that you should let me out,
Bill, dearest.”

Manet giggled. “What? What
was that? Do you suggest that I
take you back after you’ve been
behind a locked door with my
best friend?”

He went down the corridor,
giggling.

He giggled and thought: This
will never do.

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS

109

T>OURING and tumbling
through the Lifo kit, consult-
ing the manual diligently, Manet
concluded that there weren’t
enough parts left in the box to
go around.

The book gave instructions for
The Model Mother, The Model
Father, The Model Sibling and
others. Yet there weren’t parts
enough in the kit.

He would have to take parts
from Ronald or Veronica in order
to make any one of the others.
And he could not do that without
the Modifier.

He wished Trader Tom would
return and extract some higher
price from him for the Modifier,
which was clearly missing from
the kit.

Or to get even more for simply
repossessing the kit.

But Trader Tom would not be.
back. He came this way only
once.

Manet thumbed through the
manual in mechanical frustration.
As he did so, the solid piece of
the last section parted sheet by
sheet.

He glanced forward and found
the headings: The Final Model.

There seemed something om-
inous about that finality. But he
had paid a price for the kit,
hadn’t he? Who knew what price,
when it came to that? He had
every right to get everything out
of the kit that he could.

He read the unfolding p a g es '-
critically. The odd assortment of
ill-matched parts left in the box
took a new shape in his mind and
under his fingers. . .

Manet gave one final spurt
from the flesh-sprayer and stood
back.

Victor was finished. Perfect.

Manet stepped forward, lifted
the model’s left eyelid, tweaked
his nose.

“Move!”

Victor leaped back into the
Lifo kit and did a jig on one of
the flesh-sprayers.

As the device twisted as hand-
ily as good intentions, Manet
realized that it was not a flesh-
sprayer but the Modifier.

“It’s finished!” were Victor’s
first words. “It’s done!”

Manet stared at the tiny
wreck. “To say the least.”

Victor stepped out of the ob-
long box. “There is something you
should understand. I am different
from the others.”

“They all say that.”

“I am not your friend.”

“No?”

“No. You have made yourself
an enemy.”

Manet felt nothing more at
this information than an esthetic
pleasure at the symmetry of the
situation.

“•It completes the final course
in socialization,” Victor contin-
ued. “I am your adversary. I will

no

GALAXY

do everything I can to defeat you.
j have a ll your knowledge. You
do not have all your knowledge.
If you let yourself know some of
t he things, it could be used
against you. It is my function to
use everything I possibly can
against you.”

“When do you start?”

“I’ve finished. I’ve done my
worst. I have destroyed the
Modifier.”

“What’s so bad about that?”
Manet asked with some interest.

“You’ll have Veronica and
Ronald and me forever now.
We’ll never change. You’ll get
older, and we’ll never change.
You’ll lose your interest in New
York swing and jet combat and
Daniel Boone, and we’ll never
change. We don’t change and you
can’t change us for others. I’ve
made the worst thing happen to
you that can happen to any man.
I’ve seen that you will always
keep your friends.”

HE prospect was frightful.
Victor smiled. “Aren’t you
going to denounce me for a
fiend?”

“Yes, it is time for the de-
nouncement. Tell me, you feel
that now you are through? You
have fulfilled your function?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Now you will have but to
lean back, as it were, so to speak,
and see me suffer?”

“Yes.”

“No. Can’t do it, old man. Can’t.
I know. You’re too human, too
like me. The one thing a man
can’t accept is a passive state, a
state of uselessness. Not if he
can possibly avoid it. Something
has to be happening to him. He
has to be happening to some-
thing. You didn’t kill me because
then you would have nothing left
to do. You’ll never kill me.”

“Of course not!” Victor
stormed. “Fundamental safety
cut-off!”

“Rationalization. You don’t
want to kill me. And you can’t
stop challenging me at every
turn. That’s your function.”

“Stop talking and just think
about your miserable life,” Victor
said meanly. “Your friends won’t
grow and mature with you. You
won’t make any new friends.
You’ll have me to constantly re-
mind you of your uselessness,
your constant unrelenting steril-
ity of purpose. How’s that for
boredom, for passiveness?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell
you,” Manet said irritably, his
social manners rusty. “I won’t be
bored. You will see to that. It’s
your purpose. You’ll be a chal-
lenge, an obstacle, a source of
triumph every foot of the
way. Don’t you see? With
you for an enemy, I don’t
need a friend!”

— JIM HARMON

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS

111

The pythons had entered int 0
Mankind. No man knew at what
moment he might be Possessed!
By FREDERIK POHL

Illustrated by RITTER

I>ECAUSE of the crowd they
held Chandler’s trial in the
all-purpose room of the high
school. It smelled of leather and
stale sweat. He walked up the
three steps to the stage, with the
bailiff’s hand on his elbow, and
took his place at the defendant's
table.

Chandler’s lawyef looked at
him without emotion. He was ap-
pointed by the court. He was
willing to do his job, but his job
didn’t require him to like his cli-
ent. All he said was, “Stand up.
The judge is coming in.”

Chandler got to his feet and
leaned on the table while the
bailiff chanted his call and the
chaplain read some verses from
John. He did not listen. The
Bible verse came too late to hqlp
him, and besides he ached.

When the police arrested him
they had not been gentle. There
were four of them. They were
from the plant’s own security
force and carried no guns. They
didn’t need any; Chandler had
put up no resistance after the
first few moments — that is, he
stopped as soon as he could stop
— but the police hadn’t stopped.
He remembered that very clear-
ly. He remembered the nightstick
across the sfde of his head that
left his ear squashed and puffy,

112

GALAXY

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

113

he remembered the kick in the
gut that still made walking pain-
ful. He even remembered the
series of blows about the skull
that had knocked him out.

The bruises along his rib cage
and left arm, though, he did not
remember getting. Obviously the
police had been mad enough to
keep right on subduing him after
he was already unconscious.

Chandler did not blame them
— exactly. He supposed he
would have done the same thing.

The judge was having a long
mumble with the court stenog-
rapher apparently about some-
thing which had happened in the
Union House the night before.
Chandler knew Judge Ellithorp
slightly. He did not expect to get
a fair trial. The previous Decem-
ber the judge himself, while pos-
sessed, had smashed the trans-
mitter of the town’s radio station,
which he owned, and set fire to
the building it occupied. His son-
in-law had been killed in the fire.

Laughing, the judge waved the
reporter back to his seat and
glanced around the courtroom.
His gaze touched Chandler light-
ly, like the flick of the hanging
strands of cord that precede a
railroad tunnel. The touch car-
ried the same warning. What lay
ahead for Chandler was destruc-
tion.

“Read the charge,” ordered
Judge Ellithorp. He spoke very

loudly. There were more than six
hundred persons in the auditor-
ium; the judge didn’t want any
of them to miss a word.

The bailiff ordered Chandler
to stand and informed him that
he was accused of having, on the
seventeenth day of June last,
committed on the person of Mar-
garet Flershem, a minor, an act
of rape — “Louder!” ordered the
judge testily.

“Yes, Your Honor,” said the
bailiff, and inflated his chest. “An
Act of Rape under Threat of
Bodily Violence,” he cried; “and
Did Further Commit on the Per-
son of Said Margaret Flershem
an Act of Aggravated Assault — ”

Chandler rubbed his aching
side, looking at the ceiling. He
remembered the look in Peggy
Flershem’s eyes as he forced him-
self on her. She was only sixteen
years old, and at that time he
hadn’t even known her name.

The bailiff boomed on: “• — and
Did Further Commit on that
Same Seventeenth Day of June
Last on the Person of Ingovar
Porter an Act of Assault with
Intent to Rape, the Foregoing
Being a True Bill Handed Down
by the Grand Jury of Sepulpas
County in Extraordinary Session
Assembled, the Eighteenth Day
of June Last.”

Judge Ellithorp looked satis-
fied as the bailiff sat down, quite
winded. While the judge hunted

114

GALAXY

through the papers on his desk
the crowd in the auditorium
stirred and murmured.

A child began to cry.

rf^HE JUDGE stood up and
■*- pounded his gavel. “What is
it? What’s the matter with him?
You, Dundon!” The court attend-
ant the judge was looking at hur-
ried over and spoke to the child’s
mother, then reported to the
judge.

“I dunno, Your Honor. All he
says is something scared him.”
The judge was enraged. “Well,
that’s just fine! Now we have to
take up the time of all these good
people, probably for no reason,
and hold up the business of this
court, just because of a child.
Bailiff! I want you to clear this
courtroom of all children under
— ” he hesitated, calculating vot-
ing blocks in his head — “all
children under the age of six.
Dr. Palmer, are you there? Well,
you better go ahead with the —
prayer.” The judge could not
make himself say “the exor-
cism.”

“I’m sorry, madam,” he added
to the mother of the crying two-
year-old. “If you have someone
to leave the child with, I’ll in-
struct the attendants to save
your place for you.” She was also
a voter.

Dr. Palmer rose, very grave, as
he was embarrassed. He glared

around the all-purpose room, de-
fying anyone to smile, as he
chanted: “Domina Pythonis, I
command you, leave! Leave, Hel!
Leave, Heloym! Leave, Sother
and Thetragrammaton, leave, all
unclean ones! I command you!
In the name of God, in all of His
manifestations!” He sat down
again, still very grave. He knew
that he did not make nearly as
fine a showing as Father Lon,
with his resonant in nomina Jesu
Christi et Sancti Ubaldi and his
censer, but the post of exorcist
was filled in strict rotation, one
month to a denomination, ever
since the troubles started. Dr.
Palmer was a Unitarian. Exor-
cisms had not been in the curric-
ulum at the seminary and he had
been forced to invent his own.

Chandler’s lawyer tapped him
on the shoulder. “Last chance to
change your mind,” he said.

“No. I’m not guilty, and that’s
the way I want to plead.”

The lawyer shrugged and
stood up, waiting for the judge
to notice him.

Chandler, for the first time, al-
lowed himself to meet the eyes
of the crowd.

He studied the jury first. He
knew some of them casually —
it was not a big enough town to
command a jury of total strang-
ers for any defendant, and
Chandler had lived there most of
his life. He recognized Pop

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

115

Matheson, old and very stiff, who
ran the railroad station cigar
stand. Two of the other men were
familiar as faces passed in the
street. The forewoman, though,
was a stranger. She sat there
very composed and frowning,
and all he knew about her was
that she wore funny hats. Yester-
day’s had been red roses when
she was selected from the panel;
today’s was, of all things, a
stuffed bird.

He did not think that any of
them were possessed. He was not
so sure of the audience.

He saw girls he had dated in
high school, long before he met
Margot; men he worked with at
the plant. They all glanced at
him, but he was not sure who
was looking out through some of
those familiar eyes. The visitors
reliably watched all large gather-
ings, at least momentarily; it
would be surprising if none of
them were here.

“All right, how do you plead,”
said Judge Ellithorp at last.

Chandler’s lawyer straightened
up. “Not guilty, Your Honor, by
reason of temporary pandemic
insanity.”

The judge looked pleased. The
crowd murmured, but they were
pleased too. They had him dead
to rights and it would have been
a disappointment if Chandler
had pleaded guilty. They wanted
to see one of the vilest criminals

in contemporary human society
caught, exposed, convicted and
punished; they did not want to
miss a step of the process. Al-
ready in the playground behind
the school three deputies from
the sheriff’s office were loading
their rifles, while the school jani-
tor chalked lines around the
handball court to mark where the
crowd witnessing the execution
would be permitted to stand.

HPHE PROSECUTION made
its case very quickly. Mrs.
Porter testified that she worked
at McKelvey Bros., the antibi-
otics plant, where the defendant
also worked. Yes, that was him.
She had been attracted by the
noise from the culture room last

— let’s see — “Was it the seven-
teenth day of June last?”
prompted the prosecutor, and
Chandler’s attorney instinctively
gathered his muscles to rise, hesi-
tated, glanced at his client and
shrugged. That was right, it was
the seventeenth. Incautiously she
went right into the room. She
should have known better, she
admitted. She should have called
the plant police right away, but,
well, they hadn’t had any trou-
ble at the plant, you know, and

— well, she didn’t. She was a
stupid woman, for all that she
was rather good-looking, and in-
satiably curious. She had seen
Peggy Flershem on the floor.

116

GALAXY

“She was all blood. And her
clothes were — And she was, I
mean her — her body was — ”
With relentless tact the prosecu-
tor allowed her to stammer out
her observation that the girl
had clearly been raped. And she
had seen Chandler laughing and
breaking up the place, throwing
racks of cultures through the win-
dows, upsetting trays. Of course
she had crossed herself and tried
a quick exorcism but there was
no visible effect; then Chandler
had leaped at her. “He was hate-
ful! He was just foul!” But as he
began to attack her the plant
police came, drawn by her
screams.

Chandler’s attorney did not
question.

Peggy Flershem’s deposition
was introduced without objection
from the defense. But she had
little to say anyway, having been
dazed at first and unconscious
later. The plant police testified
to having arrested Chandler; a
doctor described in chaste medi-
cal words the derangements
Chandler had worked on Peggy
Flershem’s virgin anatomy. There
was no question from Chandler’s
lawyer — and, for that matter,
nothing to question. Chandler did
not hope to pretend that he had
not ravished and nearly killed
one girl, then done his best to
repeat the process on another.
Sitting there as the doctor testi-

fied, Chandler was able to tally
every break and bruise against
the memory of what his own
body had done. He had been a
spectator then, too, as remote
from the event as he was now;
but that was why they had him
on trial. That was what they did
not believe.

At twelve-thirty the prosecu-
tion rested its case, Judge Elli-
thorp looking very pleased. He
recessed the court for one hour
for lunch, and the guards took
Chandler back to the detention
cell in the basement of the school.

Two Swiss cheese sandwiches
and a wax-paper carton of choc-
olate milk were on the desk.
They were Chandler’s lunch. As
they had been standing, the sand-
wiches were crusty and the milk
lukewarm. He ate them anyway.
He knew what the judge looked
pleased about. At one-thirty
Chandler’s lawyer would put him
on the stand, and no one would
pay very much attention to what
he had to say, and the jury would
be out at most twenty minutes,
and the verdict would be guilty.
The judge was pleased because
he would be able to pronounce
sentence no later than four
o’clock, no matter what. They
had formed the habit of holding
the executions at sundown. As,
at that time of year, sundown
was after seven, it would all go
very well — for everyone but

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

117

Chandler. For Chandler it would
be the end.

II

rpHE ODD thing about Chand-
ler’s dilemma was not mere-
ly that he was innocent — in a
way, that is — but that many
who were guilty (in a way; as
guilty as he himself, at any rate)
were free and honored citizens.
Chandler himself was a widower
because his own wife had been
murdered. He had seen the mur-
derer leaving the scene of the
crime, and the man he had seen
was in the courtroom today,
watching Chandler’s own trial. Of
the six hundred or so in the court,
at least fifty were known to have
taken part in one or more prov-
able acts of murder, rape, arson,
theft, sodomy, vandalism, assault
and battery or a dozen other of-
fenses indictable under the laws
of the state. Of course, that could
be said of almost any community
in the world in those years;
Chandler’s was not unique. What
had put Chandler in the dock
was not what his body had been
seen to do, but the place in which
it had been seen to do it. For
everybody knew that medicine
and agriculture were never mo-
lested by the demons.

Chandler’s own lawyer had
pointed that out to him the day
before the trial. “If it was any-

where but at the McKelvey
plant, all right, but there’s never
been any trouble there. You
know that. The trouble with you
laymen is you think of lawyers
in terms of Perry Mason, right?
Rabbit out of the hat stuff. Well,
I can’t do that. I can only pre-
sent your case, whatever it is, the
best way possible. And the best
thing I can do for your case right
now is tell you you haven’t got
one.” At that time the lawyer
was still trying to be fair. He was
even casting around for some
thought he could use to convince
himself that his client was inno-
cent, though he had frankly ad-
mitted as soon as he introduced
himself that he didn’t have much
hope there.

Chandler protested that he
didn’t have to commit rape. He’d
been a widower for a year, but —

“Wait a minute,” said the law-
yer. “Listen. You can’t make an
ordinary claim of possession
stick, but what about good old-
fashioned insanity?” Chandler
looked puzzled, so the lawyer
explained. Wasn’t it possible that
Chandler was — consciously,
subconsciously, unconsciously,
call it what you will — trying
to get revenge for what had hap-
pened to his own wife?

No, said Chandler, certainly
not! But then he had to stop and
think. After all, he had never
been possessed before; in fact, he

had always retained a certain
skepticism about “possession” —
it seemed like such a convenient
way for anyone to do any illicit
thing he chose — until the mo-
ment when he looked up to see
Peggy Flershem walking into the
culture room with a tray of agar
disks, and was astonished to find
himself striking her with the
wrench in his hand and ripping
at her absurdly floral-printed
. slacks. Maybe his case was dif-
ferent. Maybe it wasn’t the sort
of possession that struck at ran-
dom; maybe he was just off his
rocker.

Margot, his wife, had been cut
up cruelly. He had seen his
friend, Jack Souther, leaving his
home hurriedly as he ap-
proached; and although he had
thought that the stains on his
clothes looked queerly like blood,
nothing in that prepared him for
what he found in the rumpus
room. It had taken him some
time to identify the spread-out
dissection on the floor with his
wife Margot . . . “No,” he told
his lawyer, “I was shaken up, of
course. The worst time was the
next night, when there was a
knock on the door and I opened
it and it was Jack. He’d come to
apologize. I — fell apart; but I
got over it. I tell you I was pos-
sessed, that’s all.”

“And I tell you that defense
will put you right in front of a

firing squad,”
“And that’s all.”

said his lawyer.

jC'IVE OR SIX others had been
executed for hoaxing; Chand-
ler was familiar with the ritual.
He even understood it, in a way.
The world had gone to pot in
the previous two years. The real
enemy was out of reach; when
any citizen might run wild and,
when caught, relapse into his own
self, terrified and sick, there was
a need to strike back. But the
enemy was invisible. The hoaxers
were only whipping boys — but
they were the only targets ven-
geance had.

The real enemy had struck the
entire world in a single night.
One day the people of the world
went about their business in the
gloomy knowledge that they
were likely to make mistakes but
with, at least, the comfort that
the mistakes would be their own.
The next day had no such com-
fort. The next day anyone, any-
where, was likely to find himself
seized, possessed, working evil or
whimsy without intention and
helplessly.

Chandler stood up, kicked the
balled-up wax paper from his
sandwiches across the floor and
swore violently.

He was beginning to wake
from the shock that had gripped
him. “Damn fool,” he said to him-
self. He had no particular reason.

118

GALAXY

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

119

Like the world, he needed a
whipping boy too, if only him-
self. “Damn fool, you know
they’re going to shoot you!”

He stretched and twisted his
body violently, alone in the mid-
dle of the room, in silence. He
had to wake up. He had to start
thinking. In a quarter of an hour
or less the court would recon-
vene, and from then it was only
a steady, quick slide to the grave.

It was better to do anything
than to do nothing. He examined
the windows of his improvised
cell. They were above his head
and barred; standing on the
table, he could see feet walking
outside, in the paved play-yard
of the school. He discarded the
thought of escaping that way;
there was no one to smuggle him
a file, and there was no time. He
studied the door 'to the hall. It
was not impossible that when the
guard opened it he could jump
him, knock him out, run . . . run
where? The room had been a
storage place for athletic equip-
ment at the end of a hall; the
hall led only to the stairs and
the stairs emerged into the court-
room. It was quite likely, he
thought, that the hall had an-
other flight of stairs somewhere
farther along, or through another
room. What had he spent his
taxes on these years, if not for
schools designed with more than
one exit in case of fire? But as

he had not thought to mark an
escape route when he Was
brought in, it did him no g 00( j
The guard, however, had a
gun. Chandler lifted up an edge
of the table and tried to shake
one of the legs. They did not
shake; that part of his taxes had
been well enough spent, he
thought wryly. The chair? Could
he smash the chair to get a club
which would give him a weapon
to get the guard’s gun? . . .

Before he reached the chair
the door opened and his lawyer
came in.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said brisk-
ly. “Well. As your attorney I have
to tell you they’ve presented a
damaging case. As I see it — ”
“What case?” Chandler de-
manded. “I never denied the acts.
What else did they prove?”
“Oh, God!” said his lawyer, not
quite loudly enough to be insult-
ing. “Do we have to go over that
again? Your claim of possession
would make a defense if it had
happened anywhere else. We
know that these cases exist, but
we also know that they follow a
pattern. Some areas seem to be
immune — medical establish-
ments, pharmaceutical plants
among them. So they proved that
all this happened in a pharma-
ceutical plant. I advise you to
plead guilty.”

Chandler sat down on the
edge of the table, controlling

GALAXY

himself very well, he thought,
jje only asked: “Would that do
me any good at all?”

The lawyer reflected, gazing
at the ceiling. . . No. I guess it

vvouldn t.

Chandler nodded. “So what
else shall we talk about? Want
to compare notes about where
you were and I was the night
the President went possessed?”

The lawyer was irritated. He
kept his mouth shut for a mo-
ment until he thought he could
keep from showing it. Outside a
vendor was hawking amulets:
“St. Ann beads! Witch knots!
Fresh garlic, local grown, best in
town!” The lawyer shook his
head.

“All right,” he said, “it’s your
life. We’ll do it your way. Any-
way, time’s up; Sergeant Grantz
will be banging on the door any
minute.”

He zipped up his briefcase.
Chandler did not move. “They
don’t give us much time anyway,”
the lawyer added, angry at
Chandler and at hoaxers in gen-
eral but not willing to say so.
“Grantz is a stickler for prompt-
ness.”

Chandler found a crumb of
cheese by his hand and absently
ate it. The lawyer watched him
and glanced at his watch. “Oh,
hell,” he said, picked up his brief-
case and kicked the base of the
door. “Grantz! What’s the mat-

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

ter with you? You asleep out
there?”

/’"''HANDLER was sworn, gave
his name, admitted the truth
of everything the previous wit-
nesses had said. The faces were
still aimed at him, every one. He
could not read them at all any
more, could not tell if they were
friendly or hating, there were too
many and they all had eyes. The
jurors sat on their funeral-parlor
chairs like cadavers, embalmed
and propped, the dead witness-
ing a wake for the living. Only
the forewoman in the funny hat
showed signs of life, looking
alertly at Chandler, at the judge,
at the man next to her, around
the auditorium. Maybe it was a
good sign. At least she did not
have the frozen in concrete,
guilty-as-hell look of the others.

His attorney asked him the
question he had been waiting for:
“Tell us, in your own words, what
happened.” Chandler opened his
mouth, and paused. Curiously, he
had forgotten what he wanted to
say. He had rehearsed this mo-
ment again and again; but all
that came out was:

“I didn’t do it. I mean, I did
the acts, but I was possessed.
That’s all. Others have done
worse, under the same circum-
stances, and been let off. Just as
Fisher was acquitted for murder-
ing the Leamards, as Draper got

120

121

off after what he did to the Cline
boy. As Jack Souther over there
was let off after he murdered my
own wife. They should be. They
couldn’t help themselves. What-
ever this thing is that takes con-
trol, I know it can’t be fought.
My God, you can’t even try to
fight it!”

He was not getting through.
The faces had not changed. The
forewoman of the jury was now
searching systematically through
her pocketbook, taking each item
out and examining it, putting it
back and taking out another. But
between times she looked at him
and at least her expression wasn’t
hostile. He said, addressing her:

“That’s all there is to it. It
wasn’t me running my body. It
was someone else. I swear it be-
fore all of you, and before God.”

The prosecutor did not bother
to question him.

Chandler went back to his seat
and sat down and watched the
next twenty minutes go by in
the wink of an eye, rapid, rapid,
they were in a hurry to shoot
him. He could hardly believe that
Judge Ellithorp could speak so
fast, the jurymen rise and file
out at a gallop, zip, whisk, and
they were back again. Too fast!
he cried silently, time had gone
into high gear; but he knew that
it was only his imagination. The
twenty minutes had been a full
twelve hundred seconds. And

then time, as if to make ame ' '
came to a stop, abrupt, brak^
on. The judge asked the j Ury f*"
their verdict and it was an
nity before the forewoman arosT
She was beginning to i 0Q ,
rather disheveled. Beaming at
Chandler — surely the woman
was rather odd, it couldn’t be
just his imagination — she f Uln
bled in her pocketbook for the
slip of paper with the verdict
But she wore an expression 0 f
suppressed laughter.

“I knew I had it,” she cried
triumphantly and waved the slip
above her head. “Now, let’s see.”
She held it before her eyes and
squinted. “Oh, yes. Judge, we the

jury, and so forth and so on .”

She paused to wink at Judge
Ellithorp. An uncertain worried
murmur welled up in the audi-
torium. “All that junk, Judge,”
she explained, “anyway, we u-
nanimously — but unanimously ,
love! — find this son of a bitch
innocent. Why,” she giggled, “we
think he ought to get a medal,
you know? I tell you what you
do, love, you go right over and
give him a big wet kiss and say
you’re sorry.” She kept on talk-
ing, but no one heard. The mur-
mur because a mass scream.

“Stop, stop her!” bawled the
judge, dropping his glasses.
“Bailiff!”

The scream became a word,
in many voices chorused: Pos-

sessed! And beyond doubt the
w oman was. The men around her
hurled themselves away, as from
leprosy among them, and then
washed back like a lynch mob.
She was giggling as they fell on
her. “Got a cigarette? No ciga-
rettes in this lousy bag — oh.”
She screamed as they touched
her, went limp and screamed a-
gain.

It was a different note this
time, pure hysteria: “I couldn’t
stop. Oh, God.”

/"’HANDLER caught his lawyer
^ by the arm and jerked him
away from staring at the scene.
All of a sudden he was alive
again. “You, damn it. Listen! The
jury acquitted me, right?”

The lawyer was startled.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a clear
case of — ”

“Be a lawyer, man! You live
on technicalities, don’t you? Make
this one work for me!”

The attorney gave him a queer,
thoughtful look, hesitated,
shrugged and got to his feet. He
had to shout to be heard. “Your
honor! I take it my client is free
to go.”

He made almost as much of a
stir as the sobbing woman, but he
outshouted the storm. “The jury’s
verdict is on record. Granted
there was an apparent case of
possession. Nevertheless — ”
Judge Ellithorp yelled back:

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

“No nonsense, you! Listen to me,
young man — ”

The lawyer snapped, “Permis-
sion to approach the bench.”
“Granted.”

Chandler sat unable to move,
watching the brief, stormy con-
ference. It was painful to be com-
ing back to life. It was agony to
hope. At least, he thought de-
tachedly, his lawyer was fighting
for him; the prosecutor’s face was
a thundercloud.

The lawyer came back, with
the expression of a man who has
won a victory he did not ex-
pect, and did not want. “Your
last chance, Chandler. Change
your plea to guilty.”

“But — ”

“Don’t push your luck, boy!
The judge has agreed to accept
a plea. They’ll throw you out of
town, of course. But you’ll be
alive.” Chandler hesitated. “Make
up your mind! The best I can do
otherwise is a mistrial, and that
means you’ll get convicted by
another jury next week.”

Chandler said, testing his luck:
“You’re sure they’ll keep their
end of the bargain?”

The lawyer shook his head, his
expression that of a man who
smells something unpleasant.
“Your honor! I ask you to dis-
charge the jury. My client wishes
to change his plea.”

... In the school’s chemistry
lab, an hour later, Chandler dis-

122

GALAXY

123

covered that the lawyer had left
out one little detail. Outside there
was a sound of motors idling, the
police car that would dump him
at the town’s limits; inside was a
thin, hollow hiss. It was the
sound of a Bunsen burner, and in
its blue flame a crudely shaped
iron changed slowly from cherry
to orange to glowing straw. It
had the .shape of a letter “H”.

“H” for “hoaxer.” The mark
they were about to put on his
forehead would be with him
wherever he went and as long
as he lived, which would prob-
ably not be long. “H” for “hoaxer,”
so that a glance would show that
he had been convicted of the
worst offense of all.

No one spoke to him as the
sheriff’s man took the iron out
of the fire, but three husky police-
men held his arms while he
screamed.

Ill

T HE pain was still burning
when Chandler awoke the
next day. He wished he had a
bandage, but he didn’t, and that
was that.

He was in a freight car — had
hopped it on the run at the yards,
daring to sneak back into town
long enough for that. He could
not hope to hitchhike, with that
mark on him. Anyway, hitchhik-
ing was an invitation to trouble.

The railroads were safer — .
far safer than either cars or air
transport, notoriously a lightning-
rod attracting possession. Chand-
ler was surprised when the train
came crashing to a stop, each
freight car smashing against the
couplings of the one ahead, the
engine jolting forward and stop-
ping again.

Then there was silence. It en-
dured.

Chandler, who had been slow-
ly waking after a night of very
little sleep, sat up against the
wall of the boxcar and wondered
what was wrong.

It seemed remiss to start a day
without signing the Cross or hear-
ing a few exorcismal verses. It
seemed to be mid-morning, time
for work to be beginning at the
plant. The lab men would be
streaming in, their amulets ex-
amined at the door. The chaplains
would be wandering about, ready
to pray a possessing spirit out.
Chandler, who kept an open
mind, had considerable doubt of
the effectiveness of all the amu-
lets and spells — certainly they
had not kept him from a brutal
ra pe — but he felt uneasy with-
out them. . . . The train still
was not moving. In the silence
he could hear the distant huffing
of the engine.

He went to the door, support-
ing himself with one hand on
the wooden wall, and looked out.

124

GALAXY

The tracks followed the roll of
a river, their bed a few feet higher
than an empty three-lane high-
way, which in turn was a dozen
feet about the water. As he looked
out the engine brayed twice. The
train jolted uncertainly, then
stopped again.

Then there was a very long
time when nothing happened at
all.

From Chandler’s car he could
not see the engine. He was on the
convex of the curve, and the
other door of the car was sealed.
He did not need to see it to
know that something was wrong.
There should have been a brake-
man running with a flare to ward
off other trains; but there was
not. There should have been a
station, or at least a water tank,
to account for the stop in the
first place. There was not. Some-
thing had gone wrong, and Chand-
ler knew what it was. Not the
details, but the central fact that
lay behind this and behind almost
everything that went wrong these
days.

The engineer was possessed. It
had to be that.

Yet it was odd, he thought, as
odd as his own trouble. He had
chosen this car with care. It con-
tained eight refrigerator cars full
of pharmaceuticals, and if any-
thing was known about the laws
governing possession, as his law-
yer had told him, it was that such

things were almost never inter-
fered with.

Chandler jumped down to the
roadbed, slipped on the crushed
rock and almost fell. He had for-
gotten the wound on his forehead.
He clutched the sill of the car
door, where an ankh and fleur-de-
lis had been chalked to ward off
demons, until the sudden rush of
blood subsided and the pain be-
gan to relent. After a moment he
walked gingerly to the end of the
car, slipped between the cars,
dodged the couplers and climbed
the ladder to its roof.

It was a warm, bright, silent
day. Nothing moved. From his
height he could see the Diesel at
the front of the train and the
caboose at its rear. No people.
The train was halted a quarter-
mile from where the tracks
swooped across the river on a
suspension bridge. Away from
the river, the side of the tracks
that had been hidden from him
before, was an uneven rock cut
and, above it, the slope of a
mountain.

By looking carefully he could
spot the signs of a number of
homes within half a mile or so
— the corner of a roof, a glassed-
in porch built to command a
river view, a twenty-foot tele-
vision antenna poking through
the trees. There was also the
curve of a higher road along which
the homes were strung.

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

125

Chandler took thought. He
was alive and free, two gifts more
gracious than he had had any
right to expect. However, he
would need food and he would
need at least some sort of band-
age for his forehead. He had a
wool cap, stolen from the high
school, which would hide the
mark, though what it would do
to the burn on his skin was some-
thing else again.

Chandler climbed down the
ladder. With considerable pain he
gentled the cap over the great
raw H on his forehead and began
to climb the mountain.

TTE KNOCKED on the first
door he came to, a great old
three-story house with well
tended gardens.

There was a wait. The air
smelled warmly of honeysuckle
ancl mown grass, with wild onions
chopped down by the blades of
the mower. It was pleasant, or
would have been in happier
times. He knocked again, per-
emptorily, and the door was
opened at once. Evidently some-
one had been right inside, listen-
ing.

A man stared at him. “Stranger,
what do you want?” He was short,
plump, with an extremely thick
and unkempt beard. It did not
appear to have been grown for
its own sake, for where the facial
hair could not be coaxed to grow

his skin had the gross pits of old
acne.

Chandler said glibly: “Good
morning. I’m working my W ay
east. I need something to eat
and I’m willing to work for it.”

The man withdrew, leaving the
upper half of the Dutch door
open. As it looked in on only a
vestibule it did not tell Chandler
much. There was one curious
thing — a lath and cardboard
sign, shaped like an arc of a
rainbow, lettered:

■

WELCOME TO ORPHALESE

He puzzled over it and dismissed
it. The entrance room, apart from
the sign, had a knickknack shelf
of Japanese carved ivory and an
old-fashioned umbrella rack, but
that added nothing to his knowl-
edge. He had already guessed
that the owners of this home
were well off. Also it had been
recently painted; so they were not
demoralized, as so much of the
world had been demoralized, by
the coming of the possessors.
Even the elaborate sculpturing of
its hedges had been maintained.

The man came back and with
him was a girl of fifteen or so.
She was tall, slim and rather
homely, with a large jaw and an
oval face. “Guy, he’s not much
to look at,” she said to the pock-
marked man. “Meggie, shall I let
him in?” he asked. “Guy, you

126

GALAXY

might as well,” she shrugged,
staring at Chandler with interest
but not sympathy.

“Stranger, come along,” said
the man named Guy, and led him
through a short hall into an
enormous living room, a room two
stories high with a ten-foot fire-
place.

Chandler’s first thought was
that he had stumbled in upon a
wake. The room was neatly laid
out in rows of folding chairs,
more than half of them occupied.
He entered from the side, but all
the occupants of the chairs were
looking toward him. He returned
their stares; he had had a good
deal of practice lately in looking
back at staring faces, he reflected.
“Stranger, go on,” said the man
who had let him in, nudging him,
“and meet the people of Orphal-
ese.”

Chandler hardly heard him. He
had not expected anything like
this. It was a meeting, a Daumier
caricature of a Thursday After-
noon Literary Circle, old men
with faces like moons, young
women with faces like hags. They
were strained, haggard and fear-
ful, and a surprising number of
them showed some sort of physi-
cal defect, a bandaged leg, an
arm in a sling or merely the
marks of pain on the features.
“Stranger, go in,” repeated the
man, and it was only then that
Chandler noticed the man was

holding a pistol, pointed at his
head.

/"'HANDLER sat in the rear of
^ the room, watching. There
must be thousands of little colo-
nies like this, he reflected; with
the breakdown of long-distance
communication the world had
been atomized. There was a real
fear, well justified, of living" i n
large groups, for they too were
lightning rods for possession. The
world was stumbling along, but
it was lame in all its members; a
planetary lobotomy had stolen
from it its wisdom and plan. If,
he reflected dryly, it had ever
had any.

But of course things were bet-
ter in the old days. The world
had seemed on the brink of blow-
ing itself up, but at least it was
by its own hand. Then came
Christmas.

It had happened at Christmas,
and the first sign was on nation-
wide television. The old Presi-
dent, balding, grave and plump,
was making a special address to
the nation, urging good will to
men and, please, artificial trees
because of the fire danger in the
event of H-bomb raids; in the
middle of a sentence twenty mil-
lion viewers had seen him stop,
look dazedly around and say, in
a breathless mumble, what
sounded like: “Disht dvornyet
ilgt.” He had then picked up the

Bible on the desk before him and
thrown it at the television
camera.

The last the televiewers had
seen was the fluttering pages of
the Book, growing larger as it
crashed against the lens, then a
flicker and a blinding shot of the
studio lights as the cameraman
jumped away and the instrument
swiveled to stare mindlessly up-
ward. Twenty minutes later the
President was dead, as his Secre-
tary of Health and Welfare, hur-
rying with him back to the White
House, calmly took a hand gren-
ade from a Marine guard at the
gate and blew the President’s
party to fragments.

For the President’s seizure was
only the first and most conspicu-
ous. “Disht dvornyet ilgt.” C.I.A.
specialists were playing the tapes
of the broadcast feverishly, elec-
tronically cleaning the mumble
and stir from the studio away
from the words to try to learn,
first, the language and second
what the devil it meant; but the
President who ordered it was
dead before the first reel spun,
and his successor was not quite
sworn in when it became his time
to die. The ceremony was inter-
rupted for an emergency call
from the War Room, where a
very nearly hysterical four-star
general was trying to explain
why he had ordered the immedi-
ate firing of every live missile in

his command against Washing-
ton, D. C.

Over five hundred missiles
were involved. In most of the
sites the order was disobeyed,
but in- six of them, unfortunately,
unquestioning discipline won out,
thus ending not only the swear-
ing in, the general’s weeping ex-
planation, the spinning of tapes,
but also some two million lives in
the District of Columbia, Mary-
land, Virginia and (through
malfunctioning relays on two
missiles) Pennsylvania and Ver-
mont. But it was only the begin-
ning.

f'T'HESE were the first cases of
possession seen by the world
in some five hundred years, since
the great casting out of devils of
the Middle Ages. A thousand
more occurred in the next few
days, a hundred in the next hours.
The timetable was made up out
of scattered reports in the wire-
service newsrooms, while they
still had facilities for spot cover-
age in any part of the world.
(That lasted almost a week.)
They identified 237 cases of
possession by noon of the next
day. Disregarding the dubious
items — the Yankee pitcher who
leaped from the Manhattan
bridge (he had Bright’s disease),
the warden of San Quentin who
seated himself in the gas cham-
ber and, literally, kicked the

bucket (did he know the Grand
Jury was subpoenaing his
books?) — disregarding these,
the chronology of major cases
that evening was:

8:27 PM, E.S.T.: President has
attack on television.

8:28 PM, E.S.T.: Prime Min-
ister of England orders bombing
raid against Israel, alleging secret
plot (order not carried out).

8:28 PM, E.S.T.: Captain of
SSN Ethan Allen, surfaced near
Montauk Point, orders crash dive
and course change, proceeding
submerged at flank speed to New
York Harbor.

9:10 PM, E.S.T.: Eastern Air-
lines six-engine jet makes wheels-
up landing on roof of Pentagon,
breaking some 1500 windows but
causing no other major damage
(except to the people aboard the
jet); record of this incident frag-
mentary because entire site
charred black in fusion attack
two hours later.

9:23 PM, E.S.T.: Rosalie Pan,
musical-comedy star, jumps off
stage, runs up center aisle and
vanishes in cab, wearing beaded
bra, G-string and $2500 head-
dress. Her movements are traced
to Newark airport where she
boards TWA jetliner, which is
never seen again.

9:50 PM, E.S.T.: Entire S.A.C.
fleet of 1200 jet bombers takes
off for rendezvous over New-
foundland, where 72% are com-

pelled to ditch as tankers fail to
keep refueling rendezvous. (Or-
ders committing the aircraft orig-
inate with S.A.C. commander
found to be a suicide.)

10.14 PM, E.S.T.: Submarine
fusion explosion destroys 40% Q f
New York City. Analysis of fall-
out indicates U.S. Navy Polaris
missiles were detonated under-
water in bay; by elimination it is
deduced that the submarine was
the Ethan Allen.

10:50 PM, E.S.T.: President’s
party assassinated by Secretary
of Health, Education and Wel-
fare; Secretary then dies on bay-
onet of Marine guard who fur-
nished the grenade.

10:55 PM, E.S.T. Satellite
stations observe great nuclear ex-
plosions in China and Tibet.

11:03 PM, E.S.T.: Heavily

loaded munitions barges exploded
near North Sea dikes of Holland;
dikes breached, 1800 square miles
of reclaimed land flooded out . . .

And so on. The incidents were
countless. But before long, before
even the C.I.A. had finished the
first playthrough of the tapes, be-
fore their successors in the task
identified Disht dvornyet ilgt as
a Ukrainian dialect rendering of,
My God, it works! — before all
this, one fact was already ap-
parent. There were many inci-
dents scattered around the world,
but not one of them took place
in Russia itself.

130

GALAXY

ARSAW was ablaze, China
pockmarked with blasts,
East Berlin demolished along
with its western sector, in eight
rounds fired from a U.S. Army
nuclear cannon. But the U.S.S.R.
had not suffered at all, as far as
could be told by the prying eyes
in orbit; and that fact was reason
enough for it to suffer very great-
ly very soon.

Within minutes of this dis-
covery what remained of the mil-
itary strength of the Western
world was roaring through airless
space toward the most likely tar-
gets of the East.

One unscathed missile base in
Alaska completed a full shoot,
seven missiles with fusion war-
heads. The three American bases
that survived at all in the Med-
iterranean fired what they had.
Even Britain, which had already
watched the fire-tails of the Amer-
ican missiles departing on suicide
missions, managed to resurrect its
own two prototype Blue Streaks
from their racks, where they had
moldered since the cancellation
of the British missile program.
One of these museum-pieces de-
stroyed itself in launching, but
the other chugged painfully
across the sky, the tortoise fol-
lowing the flight of the hares. It
arrived a full half-hour after the
newer, hotter missiles. It might
as well not have bothered. There
was not much left to destroy.

It was fortunate for the Com-
munists that most of the Western
arsenal had already spent itself
in suicide. What was left wiped
out Moscow, Leningrad and nine
other cities. It was even fortunate
for the whole world, for this was
the Apocalypse they had dreaded,
every possible nuclear weapon
committed. But the circum-
stances were such — hasty orders,
often at once recalled; confusion;
panic — that most were unfused,
many others merely tore great
craters in the quickly healing
surface of the sea. The fallout
was locally murderous but quite
spotty.

And the conventional forces in-
vading Russia found nothing to
fight. The Russians were as con-
fused as they. There were not
many survivors of the very top
brass, and no one seemed to
know just what had happened.

Was the Secretary of the C.P.,
U.S.S.R. behind that terrible
brief agony? As he was dead be-
fore it was over, there was no
way to tell. More than a quarter
of a billion lives went into mush-
room-shaped clouds, and nearly
half of them were Russian, Latvi-
an, Tatar and Kalmuck. The
Peace Commission squabbled for
a month, until the breakdown of
communications cut them off from
their governments and each
other; and in that way, for a time,
there was peace.

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

131

T HIS was the sort of peace that
was left, thought Chandler
looking around at the queer faces
and queerer surroundings, the
peace of medieval baronies, cut
off from the world, untouched
where the rain of fallout had
passed by but hardly civilized
any more. Even his own home
town, trying to take his life in a
form of law, reduced at last to tor-
ture and exile to cast him out,
was not the civilization he had
grown up in but something new
and ugly.

There was a great deal of talk
he did not understand because
he could not quite hear it, though
they looked at him. Then Guy,
with the gun, led him up to the
front of the room. They had con-
structed an improvised platform
out of plywood panels resting on
squat, heavy boxes that looked
like empty ammunition crates. On
the dais was a dentist’s chair,
bolted to the plywood; and in the
chair, strapped in, baby spotlights
on steel-tube frames glaring on
her, was a girl. She looked at
Chandler with regretting eyes
but did not speak.

“Stranger, get up there,” said
Guy, prodding him from behind,
and Chandler took a plain wood-
en chair next to the girl.

“People of Orphalese,” cried
the teen-age cutie named Meggie,
“we have two more brands to save
from the imps!”

The men and women in ^
audience cackled or shrilled
“Save them! Save them!” They
all had a look of invisible uni-
forms, Chandler saw, like baseball
players in the lobby of a hotel
or soldiers in a diner outside the
gate of their post; they were all
of a type. Their type was some-
thing strange. Some were tall,
some short; there were old, fat,
lean and young around them; but
they all wore about them a look
of glowing excitement, muted by
an aura of suffering and pain.
They wore, in a word, the look of
bigots.

The bound girl was not one of
them. She might have been twen-
ty years old or as much as thirty.
She might have been pretty. It
was hard to tell; she wore no
makeup, her hair strung raggedly
to her neck, and her face was
drawn into a tight, lean line. It
was her eyes that were alive. She
saw Chandler and she was sorry
for him. And he saw, as he turned
to look at her, that she was man-
acled to the dentist’s chair.

“People of Orphalese,” chanted
Guy, standing behind Chandler
with the muzzle of the gun
against his neck, “the meeting of
the Orphalese Self-Preservation
Society will now come to order.”
There was an approving, hungry
murmur from the audience.

“Well, people of Orphalese,”
Guy went on in his singsong, “the

132

GALAXY

agenda for the day is first the
salvation of we Orphalese on Mc-
Guire’s Mountain.”

(“All saved, all of us saved,”
rolled a murmur from the con-
gregation.”) A lean, red-headed
man bounded to the platform and
fussed wi(h the stand of spot-
lights, turning one of them full
on Chandler.

“People of Orphalese, as we are
saved, do I have your consent to
pass on and proceed to the next
order of business?”

(“Consent, consent, consent,”
rolled the echo.)

“And then the second item of
business is to welcome and bring
to grace these two newly found
and adopted souls.”

The congregation shouted var-
iously: “Bring them to grace!

Save them from the imps! Keep
Orphalese from the taint of the
beast!”

Evidently Guy was satisfied.
He nodded and became more
chatty. “Okay, people of Orpha-
lese, let’s get down to it. We got
two new ones, like I say. Their
spirits have gone wandering on
the wind, or anyway one of them
has, and you all know the et cet-
era. They have committed a
wrong unto others and therefore
unto themselves. Herself, I mean.
Course, the other one could have
a flame spirit in him too.” He
stared severely at Chandler.
“Boys, keep an eye on him, why

don’t you?” he said to two men
in the front row, surrendering his
gun. “Meggie, you tell about the
female one.”

The teen-aged girl stepped for-
ward and said, in a conversational
tone but with modest pride, “Peo-
ple of Orph’lese, well, I was walk-
ing down the cut and I heard this
car coming. Well, I was pretty
surprised, you know. I had to
figure what to do. You all know
what the trouble is with cars.”

“The imps!” cried a woman of
forty with a face like a catfish.

The girl nodded. “Most prob’ly.
Well, I — I mean, people of
Orph’lese, well, I was by the
switchback where we keep the
chevvy-freeze hid, so I just waited
till I saw it slowing down for the
curve — me out of sight, you
know — and I rolled the chevvy-
freeze out nice and it caught the
wheels. Right over!” she cried
gleefully. “Off the shoulder,
people of Orph’lese, and into the
ditch and over, and I didn’t give
it a chance to burn. I cut the
switch and I had her! I put a knife
into her back, just a little, about
a quarter of an inch, maybe. Her
pain was the breakin’ of the shell
that enclosed her understanding,
like it says. I figured she was all
right then because she yelled but
I brought her along that way.
Then Guy took care of her until
we got the synod. Oh,” she re-
membered, “and her tongue

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

133

staggered a little without purpose
while he was putting it on, didn’t
it, Guy?” The bearded man nod-
ded, grinning, and lifted up the
girl’s foot. Incredulously, Chand-
ler saw that it was bound tight
with a three-foot length of barbed
wire, wound and twisted like a
tourniquet, the blood black and
congealed around it. He lifted his
shocked eyes to meet the girl’s.
She only looked at him, with pity
and understanding.

Guy patted the foot and let it
go. “I didn’t have any more C-
clamps, people of Orphalese,” he
apologized, “but it looks all right
at that. Well, let’s see. We got to
make up our minds about these
two, I guess — no, wait!” He held
up his hand as a murmur began.
“First thing is, we ought to read
a verse or two.”

He opened a purple-bound
volume at random, stared at a
page for a moment, moving his
lips, and then read:

“Some of you say, ‘It is the
north wind who has woven the
clothes we wear.’

“And I say, Ay, it was the north
wind, but shame was his loom,
and the softening of the sinews
was his thread.

“And when his work was done
he laughed in the forest.”

Gently he closed the book,
looking thoughtfully at the wall
at the back of the room. He
scratched his head. “Well, people

of Orphalese,” he said slowly
“they’re laughing in the forest all
right, I guarantee, but we’ve got
one here that may be honest in
the flesh, probably is, though she
was a thief in the spirit. Right?
Well, do we take her in or reject
her, O people of Orphalese?”

The audience muttered to it-
self and then began to call out:
“Accept! Oh, bring in the brand!
Accept and drive out the imp!”

“Fine,” said the teen-ager, rub-
bing her hands and looking at the
bearded man. “Guy, let her go.”
He began to release her from the
chair. “You, girl stranger, what’s
your name?”

The girl said faintly, “Ellen
Braisted.”

“ ‘Meggie, my name is Ellen
Braisted,’ ” corrected the teen-
ager. “Always say the name of
the person you’re talkin’ to in
Orph’lese, that way we know it’s
you talkin’, not a flame spirit or
wanderer. Okay, go sit down.”
Ellen limped wordlessly down
into the audience. “Oh, and peo-
ple of Orph’lese,” said Meggie,
“the car’s still there if we need it
for anything. It didn’t burn. Guy,
you go on with this other fellow.”

Guy stroked his beard and as-
sessed Chandler, looking him over
carefully. “Okay,” he said. “Peo-
ple of Orphalese, the third order
of business is to welcome or re-
ject this other brand saved from
the imps, as may be your p/^as-

134

GALAXY

ure.” Chandler sat up straighter
now that all of them were look-
ing at him again; but it wasn’t
quite his turn, at that, because
there was an interruption. Guy
never finished. From the valley,
far below, there was a sudden
mighty thunder, rolling among
the mountains. The windows blew
in with a crystalline crash.

;

TPHE room erupted into con-
fusion, the audience leaping
from their seats, running to the
broad windows, Guy and the teen-
age girl seizing rifles, everyone
in motion at once.

Chandler straightened, then
sat down again. The red-headed
man guarding him was looking
away. It would be quite possible
to grab his gun, run, get away
from these maniacs. Yet he had
nowhere to go. They might be
crazy, but they seemed to have
organization.

They seemed, in fact, to have
worked out, on whatever crazed
foundation of philosophy, some
practical methods for coping with
possession. He decided to stay,
wait and see.

And at once he found himself
leaping for the gun.

No. Chandler didn’t find him-
self attacking the red-headed
man. He found his body doing it;
Chandler had nothing to do with
it. It was the helpless compulsion
he had felt before, that had nearly

cost him his life; his body active
and urgent and his mind com-
pletely cut off from it. He felt his
own muscles move in ways he
had not planned, observed him-
self leap forward, felt his own fist
strike at the back of the red-
headed man’s ear. The man went
spinning, the gun went flying,
Chandler’s body leaped after it,
with Chandler a prisoner in his
own brain, watching, horrified
and helpless. And he had the gun!

He caught it in the hand that
was his own hand, though some-
one else was moving it; he raised
it and half-turned. He was sud-
denly conscious of a fusillade of
gunfire ■ from the roof, and a
scattered echo of guns all round
the outside of the house. Part of
him was surprised, another alien
part was not. He started to shoot
the teen-aged girl in the back of
the head, silently shouting No!

His fingers never pulled the
trigger.

He caught a second’s glimpse
of someone just beside him,
whirled and saw the girl, Ellen
Braisted, limping swiftly toward
him with her barbed-wire amulet
loose and catching at her feet. In
her hands was an axe-handle club
caught up from somewhere. She
struck at Chandler’s head, with
a face like an eagle’s, impersonal
and determined. The blow caught
him and dazed him, and from be-
hind someone else struck him with

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

135

something else. He went down.

He heard shouts and firing, but
he was stunned. He felt himself
dragged and dropped. He saw a
cloudy, misty girl’s face hanging
over him; it receded and re-
turned. Then a frightful blister-
ing pain in his hand startled him
back into full consciousness.

It was the girl, Ellen, still there,
leaning over him and, oddly,
weeping. And the pain in his
hand was the burning flame of
a kitchen match. Ellen was doing
it, his wrist in one hand, a burn-
ing match held to it with the
other.

IV

/'''HANDLER yelled hoarsely,
^ jerking his hand away.

She dropped the match and
jumped up, stepping on the flame
and watching him. She had a
butcher knife that had been
caught between her elbow and her
body while she burned him. Now
she put her hand on the knife,
waiting. “Does it hurt?” she de-
manded tautly.

Chandler howled, with incred-
ulity and rage: “God damn it,
yes! What did you expect?”

“I expected it to hurt,” she
agreed. She watched him for a
moment more and then, for the
first time since he had seen her,
she smiled. It was a small smile,
but a beginning. A fusillade of

shots from outside wiped it away
at once. “Sorry,” she said. “I had
to do that. Please trust me.”

“Why did you have to burn
my hand?”

“House rules,” she said. “Keeps
the flame-spirits out, you know.
They can’t stand pain.” She took
her hand off the knife warily. “It
still hurts, doesn’t it?”

“It still does, yes,” nodded
Chandler bitterly, and she lost
interest in him and got up, look-
ing about the room. Three of the
Orphalese were dead, or seemed
to be from the casual poses in
which they lay draped across a
chair on the floor. Some of the
others might have been freshly
wounded, though it was hard to
tell the casualties from the others
in view of the Orphalese custom
of self-inflicted pain. There was
still firing going on outside and
overhead, and a shooting-gallery
smell of burnt powder in the air.
The girl, Ellen Braisted, limped
back with the butcher knife held
carelessly in one hand. She was
followed by the teen-ager, who
wore a smile of triumph — and,
Chandler noticed for the first
time, a sort of tourniquet of
barbed-wire on her left forearm,
the flesh puffy red around it.
“Whopped ’em,” she said with
glee, and pointed a .22 rifle at
Chandler.

Ellen Braisted said, “Oh, he —
Meggie, I mean, he’s all right.”

I She pointed at his burned palm.
I Meg approached him with com-
I petent care, the rifle resting on
I her good right forearm and aimed
at him as she examined his burn.
She pursed her lips and looked
at his face. “All right, Ellen, I
guess he’s clean. But you want to
burn ’em deeper’n that. Never
pays to go easy, just means we’ll
have to do something else to ’im
tomorrow.”

“The hell you will,” thought
Chandler, and all but said it; but
reason stopped him. In Rome he
would have to do Roman deeds.
Besides, maybe their ideas
worked. Besides, he had until to-
morrow to make up his mind
about what he wanted to do.

“Ellen, show him around,” or-
dered the teen-ager. “I got no
time myself. Shoosh! Almost got
us that time, Ellen. Got to be
more careful, cause the white-
handed aren’t clean, you know.”
She strutted away, the rifle at
trail. She seemed to be enjoying
herself very much.

HPHE name of the girl in the
•*- barbed-wire bracelet was El-
len Braisted. She came from
Lehigh County, Pennsylvania,
and Chandler’s first wonder was
what she was doing nearly three
thousand miles from home.

Nobody liked to travel much
these days. One place was as bad
as another, except that in the

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

place where you were known you
could perhaps count on friends
and as a stranger you were prob-
able fair game anywhere else. Of
course, there was one likely
reason for travel.

She didn’t like to talk about
it, that was clear, but that was
the reason. She had been pos-
sessed. When the teen-ager
trapped her car the day before
she had been the tool of another’s
will. She had had a dozen sub-
machine guns in the trunk and
she had meant to deliver them to
a party of hunters in a valley just
south of McGuire’s Mountain.
Chandler said, with some effort,
“I must have been — ”

“Ellen, I must have been,” she
corrected.

“Ellen, I must have been pos-
sessed too, just now. When I
grabbed the gun.”

“Of course. First time?”

He shook his head. For some
reason the brand on his forehead
began to throb.

“Well, then you know. Look
out here, now.”

They were at the great pier
windows that looked out over the
valley. Down below was the river,
an arc of the railroad tracks, the
wooded mountainside he had
scaled. “Over there, Chandler.”
She was pointing to the railroad
bridge.

Wispy gray smoke drifted off
southward toward the stream.

136

GALAXY

137

The freight train Chandler had
ridden on had been stopped, all
that time, in the middle of the
bridge. The explosion that blew
out their windows had occurred
when another train plowed into
it — evidently at high speed. It
seemed that one of the trains had
carried some sort of chemicals.
The bridge was a twisted mess.

“A diversion, Chandler,” said
Ellen Braisted. “They wanted us
looking that way. Then they at-
tacked from up the mountain.”
“Who?”

Ellen looked surprised. “The
men that crashed the trains . . .
if they are men. The ones who
possessed me — and you — and
the hunters. They don’t like these
Orphalese, I think. Maybe they’re
a little afraid of them. I think the
Orphalese have a pretty good
idea of how to fight them.”

Chandler felt a sudden flash of
sensation along his nerves. For a
moment he thought he had been
possessed again, and then he
knew it for what it was. It was
hope. “Ellen, I never thought of
fighting them. I thought that was
given up two years ago.”

“So maybe you agree with me?
Maybe you think it’s worth while
sticking with the Orphalese?”
Chandler allowed himself the
contemplation of what hope
meant. To find someone in this
world who had a plan! Whatever
the plan was. Even if it was a

bad plan. He didn’t think specific,
ally of himself, or the brand on
his forehead or the memory 0 f
the body of his wife. What he
thought of was the prospect 0 f
thwarting — not even defeating,
merely hampering or annoying
was enough! — the imps, the
“flame creatures,” the pythons
devils, incubi or demons who had
destroyed a world he had thought
very fair.

“If they’ll have me,” he said,
“I’ll stick with them, all right.
Where do I go to join?”

TT was not hard to join at all.

Meg chattily informed him
that he was already practically a
member. “Chandler, we got to
watch everybody strange, you
know. See why, don’t you? Might
have a flame spirit in ’em, no fault
of theirs, but look how they could
mess us up. But now we know
you don’t, so — What do you
mean, how do we know? Cause
you did have one when you busted
loose in there. Can’t have two at
a time, you know. Think we
couldn’t tell the difference?”
The interrupted meeting was
resumed after the place had been
tidied up and the dead buried.
There had been four of the hunt-
ers, and even without their sub-
machine guns they had succeeded
in killing eight Orphalese. But it
was not all loss to the Orphalese,
because two of the hunters were

138

GALAXY

[ still alive, though wounded, and
under the rules of this chessboard
the captured enemy became a
friend.

Guy had suffered a broken jaw
in the scuffle and another man
| presided, a fat youth who favored
a bandaged leg. He limped to his
f feet, grimacing and patting his
leg. “O Orphalese and brothers,”
he said, “we have lost friends, but
we have won a test. Praise the
Prophet, we will be spared to win
again, and to drive the imps of
fire out of our world. Meggie, you
going to tie these folks up?” The
girl proudly ordered one of the
hunters into the spotlighted den-
tist’s chair, another into a wing
chair that was hastily moved onto
the platform. The men were
bleeding and hurt, but they had
clearly been abandoned by their
possessors. They watched with
puzzlement and fear.

“Walter, they’re okay now,”
Meg reported as others finished
tying up the hunters. “Oh, wait
a minute.” She advanced on
Chandler. “Chandler, I’m sorry.
You sit down there, hear?”

Chandler suffered himself to
be bound to a camp chair on the
platform and Walter took a drink
of wine and opened the ornate
book that was before him on the
rostrum.

“Meg, thanks. Guy, I hope I do
this as good as you do. Let me
read you a little. Let’s see.” He

put on his steel-rimmed glasses
and read:

“Much in you is still man, and
much in you is not yet man, but
a shapeless pigmy that walks
asleep in the mist searching for
its own awakening.”

He closed the book, looked
with satisfaction at Guy and
said : “Do you understand that,
new friends? They are the words
of the Prophet, who men call
Kahlil Gibran. For the benefit of
the new folks I ought to say that
he died this fleshly life quite a
good number of years ago, but
his vision was unclouded. Like we
say, we are the sinews that batter
the flame spirits but he is our
soul.” There was an antiphonal
murmur from the audience and
Walter flipped the pages again
rapidly, obviously looking for a
familiar passage. “People of Or-
phalese, here we are now. This’s
what he says. What is this that
has torn our world apart? The
Prophet says: “It is life in quest
of life, in bodies that fear the
grave.” Now, honestly, nothing
could be clearer than that, people
of Orphalese and friends! We got
something taking possession of
us, see? What is it? Well, he says
here, people of Orphalese and
friends, ‘It is a flame spirit in you
ever gathering more of itself.’
Now, what the heck! Nobody can
blame us for what a flame spirit
in us does! So the first thing we

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

139

got to learn, friends — and
people of Orphalese — is, we
aren’t to blame. And the second
thing is, we are to blame!”

He turned and grinned at
Chandler kindly, while the cho-
rus of responses came from the
room, “Like here,” he said,
. “people of Orphalese, the Proph-
et says everybody is guilty. ‘The
murdered is not unaccountable
for his own murder, and the
robbed is not blameless in being
robbed. The righteous is not in-
nocent of the deeds of the wick-
ed, and the white-handed is not
clean in the doings of the felon.’
You see what he’s getting at?
We all got to take the respon-
sibility for everything — - and
that means we got to suffer —
but we don’t have to worry about
any special things we did when
some flame spirit or wanderer,
like, took us over.

“But we do have to suffer,
people of Orphalese.” His expres-
sion became grim. “Our beloved
founder, Guy, who’s sitting there
doing a little extra suffering now,
was favored enough to under-
stand these things in the very
beginning, when he himself was
seized by these imps. And it is all
in this book! Like it says, ‘Your
pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter
potion by which the physician
within you heals your sick self.’
Ponder on that, people of Or-
phalese — and friends. No, I

mean really ponder,” he ex
plained, glancing at the bound
“friends” on the platform. “w e
always do that for a minute. Ada
there will play us some music so
we can ponder.”

/^HANDLER shifted uncorn-
^ fortably, while an old woman
crippled by arthritis began fum-
bling a tune out of an electric
organ. The burn Ellen Braisted
had given him was beginning to
hurt badly. If only these people
were not such obvious nuts, he
thought, he would feel a lot better
about casting his lot in with them.
But maybe it took lunatics to do
the job. Sane people hadn’t ac-
complished much.

And anyway he had very little
choice . . .

“Ada, that’s enough,” ordered
the fat youth. “Meg, come on up
here. People of Orphalese, now
you can listen again while Meg
explains to the new folks how all
this got started, seeing Guy’s in
no condition to do it.”

The teen-ager marched up to
the platform and took the parade-
rest position learned in some
high-school debating society — in
the days when there were debat-
ing societies and high schools.
“Ladies and gentlemen, well, let’s
start at the beginning. Guy tells
this better’n I do, of course, but
I guess I remember it all pretty
well too. I ought to. I was in on

140

GALAXY

it and all.” She grimaced and
said, “Well, anyway, ladies and
gentlemen — people of Orph’lese
. — the way Guy organized this
Orphalese self-protection society
was, like Walter says, he was pos-
sessed. The only difference be-
tween Guy and you and me was
that ha knew what to do about
it, because he read the book, you
see. Not that that helped him at
first, when he was took over. He
was really seized. Yes, people of
Orph’lese, he was taken and while
his whole soul and brain and body
was under the influence of some
foul wanderer fiend from hell he
did things that, ladies and gentle-
men of Orph’lese, I wouldn’t want
to tell you. He was a harp in
the hand of the mighty, as it says.
Couldn’t help it, not however
much he tried. Only while he was
doing — the things — he hap-
pened to catch his hand in a gas
flame and, well, you can see it
was pretty bad.” With a depreca-
tory smile Guy held up a twisted
hand. “And, do you know, he was
free of his imp right then and
there! Now, Guy is a scientist,
people of Orph’lese, he worked
for the telephone company, and
he not only had that training in
the company school but he had
read the book, you see, and he put
two and two together. Oh, and
he’s my uncle, of course. I’m
proud of him. I’ve always loved
him, and even when he — when

he was not one with himself, you
know, when he was doing those
terrible things to me, I knew it
wasn’t Uncle Guy that was doing
them, but something else. I didn’t
know what, though. And when he
told me he had figured out the
Basic Rule, I went along with
him every bit. I knew Guy wasn’t
wrong, and what he said was from
Scripture. Imps fear pain! So we
got to love it. That one I know
by heart, all right: ‘Could you
keep your heart from wonder at
the daily miracles of your life,
your pain would not seem less
wondrous than your joy.’ That’s
what it says, right? So that’s why
we got to hurt ourselves, people
of Orph’lese — and new brothers
— because the wanderers don’t
like it when we hurt and they
leave us alone. Simple’s that.

“Well — ” the girl’s face stif-
fened momentarily — “I knew I
wasn’t going to be seized. So Guy
and I got Else, that’s the other
girl he’d been doing things to,
and we knew she wasn’t going
to be taken either. Not if the imps
feared pain like Guy said, be-
cause,” she said solemnly, “I want
to tell you Guy hurt us pretty
bad.

“And then we came out here,
and found this place, and ever
since then we’ve been adding
brothers and sisters. It’s been
slow, of course, because not many
people come this way any more,

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

141

and we’ve had to kill a lot. Yes,
we have. Sometimes the possessed
just can’t be saved, but — ”

Abruptly her face changed.

Suddenly alert, her face years
older, she glanced around the
room. Then she relaxed . . .

And screamed.

leaped up. Hoarsely, his
voice almost inarticulate as
he tried to talk with his broken
jaw, he cried, “Wha . . . Wha’s . . .
matter, Meg?

“Uncle Guy!” she wailed. She
plunged off the platform and flung
herself into his arms, crying hys-
terically.

“Wha?”

She sobbed, “I could feel it!
They took me. Guy, you prom-
ised me they couldn’t!”

He shook his head, dazed,
staring at her as though she were
indeed possessed — -still possessed,
and telling him some fearful
great lie to destroy his hopes. He
seemed unable to comprehend
what she had said. One of the
hunters bellowed in stark fear:
“For God’s sake, untie us! Give
us a chance, anyway!” Chandler
yelled agreement. In one split
second everyone in the room had
been transmuted by terror into
something less than human. No
one seemed capable of any action.
Slowly the plump youth who had
presided moved over to the hunt-
er bound in the dentist’s chair and

began to fumble blindly at the
knots. Ellen Braisted dropped
her head into her hands and be-
gan to shake.

The cruelty of the moment was
that they had all tasted hope.
Chandler writhed wildly against
his ropes, his mind racing out of
control. The world had become
a hell for everyone, but a bearable
hell until the promise of a chance
to end it gave them a full sight
of what their lives had been. Now
that that was dashed they were
far worse off than before.

Walter finished with the hunt-
er and lethargically began to pick
at Chandler’s bonds. His face was
slack and unseeing.

Then it, too, changed.

The plump youth stood up
sharply, glanced about, and
walked off the platform.

Ellen Braisted raised her face
from her hands and, her eyes
streaming, quietly stood up and
followed. The old lady with the
arthritis about-faced and limped
with them. Chandler stared, puz-
zled, and then comprehended.

They were marching toward
the corner of the room where the
rifles were stacked. “Possessed!”
Chandler bellowed, the words
tasting of acid as they ripped out
of his throat. “Stop them! You —
Guy — look!” He flailed wildly
at his loosened bonds, lunged,
tottered and toppled, chair and
all, crashingly off the platform.

142

GALAXY

The three possessed ones did
not need to hurry. They had all
the time in the world. They were
already reaching out for the rifles
when Chandler shouted. Econom-
ically they turned, raising the
butts to their shoulders, and began
to fire at the Orphalese. It was
a queerly frightening sight to see
the arthritic organist, with a face
like a relaxed executioner, take
quick aim at Guy and, with a
thirty-thirty shell, blow his throat
out. Three shots, and the nearest
three of the congregation were
dead. Three more, and others
went down, while the remainder
turned and tried to run. It was
like a slaughter of vermin. They
never had a chance.

When every Orphalese except
themselves was down on the
floor, dead, wounded or, like
Chandler, overlooked, the arthrit-
ic lady took careful aim at Ellen
Braisted and the plump youth
and shot them neatly in the tem-
ples.- They didn’t try to prevent
her. With expressions that seemed
almost impatient they presented
their profiles to her aim.

Then the arthritic lady glanced
leisurely about, fired into the
stomach of a wounded man who
was trying to rise, reloaded her
rifle for insurance and began to
search the bodies of the nearest
dead. She was looking for mat-
ches. When she found them, she
tugged weakly at the upholstery

on a couch, swore and began
methodically to rip and crumple
pages out of Kahlil Gibran. When
she had a heap of loose papers
piled against the dais she pitched
the remainder of the book out of
the window, knelt and ignited the
crumpled heap.

She stood watching the fire,
her expression angry and impa-
tient, tapping her foot.

The crumpled pages burned
briskly. Before they died the
wooden dais was beginning to
catch. Laboriously the old lady
toted folding chairs to pile on the
blaze until it was roaring hand-
somely.

She watched it for several min-
utes, until it was a great orange
pillar of fire sweeping to the ceil-
ing, until the drapes on the wall
behind were burning and the
platform was a holocaust, until
the noise of crackling flame and
the beginning of plaster falling
from the high ceiling proved that
there was no likelihood of the fire
going out and, indeed, no way to
put it out without a complete fire
department arriving on the scene
at once.

The old lady’s expression
cleared. She nodded to herself.
She then put the muzzle of the
rifle in her mouth and, with her
thumb, pulled the trigger that
blew the top of her head off. The
body fell into the flames, but it
was by then already dead.

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

143

/'''HANDLER had not been shot,
^ but he was very near to
roasting. Walter had released
one hand and, while the pos-
sessed woman’s attention was
elsewhere, Chandler had worked
on the other knots.

When he saw her commit sui-
cide he redoubled his efforts. It
was incredible to him that his
life had been saved, and he knew
that if he escaped the flames he
still had nothing to live for —
that blasted brief hope had
broken his spirit — but his fingers
had a will of their own.

He lay there, struggling, while
great black clouds of smoke,
orange painted from the flames,
gathered under the high ceiling,
while the thunder of falling lumps
of plaster sounded like a child
heaving volumes of the Encyclo-
pedia Britannica down a flight of
stairs, while the heat and short-
age of oxygen made him breathe
in violent spasms. Then he cried
out sharply and stumbled to his
feet. It was only a matter of mo-
ments before he was out of the
house, but it was very nearly not
time enough.

Behind him was a great, sus-
tained crash. He thought it must
have been the furniture on the
upper floor toppling through the
burned-out ceiling of the hall. He
turned and looked.

It was dark, and now every
window on the side of the house

facing him was lighted. It was as
though some mad householder
had decided to equip his rooms
only with orange lights, orange
lights that flickered and moved.
For a second Chandler thought
there were still living people in
the rooms — shapes moved and
cavorted at the windows, as
though they were gathering up
possessions or waving wildly for
help. But it was only the drapes,
aflame, tossed about in the fierce
heat.

Chandler sighed and turned
away.

Pain was not a sure defense
after all. Evidently it was only
an annoyance to the possessors
. . . whoever, or whatever, they
might be. As soon as they had
become suspicious they had ex-
erted themselves and destroyed
the Orphalese. He listened and
looked about, but no one else
moved. He had not expected any-
one. He had been sure that he was
the only survivor.

He began to walk down the
hill toward the wrecked railway
bridge, turning only when a roar
told him that the roof of the
house had fallen in. A tulip of
flame a hundred feet tall rose
above the standing walls, and
above that a shower of floating
red-orange sparks, heat-borne,
drifting up and away and begin-
ning to settle all over the moun-
tainside. Many were still red when

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

145

Ilf!

they landed, a few still flaming.
It was a distinct risk that the
trees would begin to burn, and
then he would be in fresh danger.
So great was his stupor that he
did not even hurry.

By a plowed field he flung
himself to the ground.

He could go no farther because
he had nowhere to go. He had
had two homes and he had been
driven from both of them, He
had had hope twice, and twice
he had been damned.

He lay on his back, with the
burning house mumbling and
crackling in the distance, and
stared up at the orange-lit tops of
the trees and, past them, the
stars. Over his left shoulder De-
neb chased Vega across the sky;
toward his feet something moved
between the bright rosy dot that
was Antares and another, the
same brightness and hue — Mars?
He spent several moments won-
dering if Mars were in that part
of the heavens. Then he looked
again for the tiny moving point
that had crossed the claws of the
Scorpion, but it was gone. A sat-
ellite, maybe. Although there
were few of them left that the
naked eye could hope to see. And
there would never be any more,
because the sort of accumulated
wealth of nations that threw
rockets into the sky was forever
spent.

It was probably an airplane, he

thought drowsily, and drifted off
to sleep without realizing how re-
mote even that possibility had
become . . . He woke up to find
that he was getting to his feet.

Once again an interloper ten-
anted his brain. He tried to in-
terfere, for he could not help it,
although he knew how useless it
was, but his own neck muscles
turned his head from side to side,
his own eyes looked this way and
that, his own hand reached down
for a dead branch that lay on the
ground, then hesitated and with-
drew. His body stood motionless
for a second, the lips moving, the
larynx mumbling to itself. He
could almost hear words. Chand-
ler felt like a fly in amber, pris-
oned in his own brainbox. He was
not surprised when his legs moved
to carry him back toward the
destroyed building, now a fakir’s
bed of white-hot coals with brush
fires spattered around it. He
thought he knew why. It seemed
very likely that what possessor
had him was a sort of clean-up
squad, tidying up the loose ends
of the slaughter; he expected that
his body’s errand was to destroy
itself, and thus him, as all the
Orphalese had been destroyed.

V

/"’HANDLER’S body carried
^ him rapidly toward the house.
Now and then it paused and

146

GALAXY

glanced about. It seemed to be
weighing some shortcut in its er-
rand; but always it resumed its
climb.

Chandler could sympathize
with it, in a way. He still felt
every pain from burn, brand and
wound; as they neared the em-
bers of the building the heat it
threw off intensified them all. He
could not be a comfortable body
to inhabit for long. He was almost
sympathetic because his tenant
could not find a convenient weap-
on with which to fulfill his pur-
pose.

When it seemed they could get
no closer without the skin of his
face crackling and bursting into
flame his body halted.

Chandler could feel his mus-
cles gathering for what would be
the final leap into the auto-da-fe.
His feet took a short step — and
slipped. His body stumbled and
recovered itself; his mouth swore
thickly in a language he did not
know.

Then his body hesitated,
glanced at the ground, paused
again and bent down. It had
tripped on a book. It picked the
book up, and Chandler saw that
it was the Orphalese copy of
Gibran’s The Prophet.

Chandler’s body stood poised
for a moment, in an attitude of
thought. Then it sat down, in the
play of heat from the coals. It
was a moment before Chandler

realized he was free. He tested
his legs; they worked; he got up,
turned and began to walk away.

He had traveled no more than
a few yards when he stumbled
slightly, as though shifting gears,
and felt the tenant in his mind
again.

He continued to walk away
from the building, down toward
the road. Once his arm raised the
book he still carried and his eyes
glanced down, as if for reassur-
ance that it was the same book.
That was the only clue he was
given as to what had happened
and it was not much. It was as
though his occupying power,
whatever it was, had gone —
somewhere — to think things over,
perhaps to ask a question of an
unimaginable companion, and
then returned with an altered
purpose. As time passed, Chand-
ler began to receive additional
clues, but he was in little shape
to fit them together, for his body
was near exhaustion.

He walked to the road, and
waited, rigid, until a panel truck
came bouncing along. He hailed
it, his arms making a sign he did
not understand, and when it stop-
ped he addressed the driver in
a language he did not speak.
“Shto,” said the driver, a somber-
faced Mexican in dungarees. “Ja
nie jestem Ruska. Czego prag-
niesh?”

“Czy ty jedziesz to Los Ange-

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

147

les?” asked Chandler’s mouth.

“Nyet. Acapulco.”

Chandler’s voice argued, 'Wes
na Los Angeles.”

“Nyet.” The voices droned on.
Chandler lost interest in the ar-
gument and was only relieved
when it seemed somehow to be
settled and he was herded into the
back of the truck. The somber
Mexican locked him in; he felt
the truck begin to move; his
tenant left him, and he was at
once asleep.

He woke long enough to find
himself standing in the mist of
early dawn at a crossroads. In a
few minutes another car came
by, and his voice talked earnestly
with the driver for a moment.
Chandler got in, was released,
slept again and woke to find him-
self free and abandoned, sprawled
across the back seat of the car,
which was parked in front of a
building marked Los Angeles In-
ternational Airport.

/"'’HANDLER got out of the car
^ and strolled around, stretch-
ing. He realized he was very
hungry.

No one was in sight. The field
showed clear signs of having been
through the same sort of destruc-
tion that had visited every major
communications facility in the
world. Part of the building before
him was smashed flat and showed
signs of having been burned. He

saw projecting aluminum mem-
bers, twisted and scorched but
still visibly aircraft parts. Appar-
ently a transport had crashed in-
to the building. Burned-out cars
littered the parking lot and what
had once been a green lawn. They
seemed to have been bulldozed
out of the way, but not an inch
farther than was necessary to
clear the approach roads.

To his right, as he stared out
onto the field, was a strange-
looking construction on three
legs, several stories high. It did
not seem to serve any useful pur-
pose. Perhaps it had been a sort
of luxury restaurant at one time,
like the Space Needle from the
old Seattle Fair, but now it too
was burned out and glassless in
its windows. The field itself was
swept bare except for two or
three parked planes in the bays,
but he could see wrecked trans-
ports lining the approach strips.
All in all, Los Angeles Interna-
tional Airport appeared to be
serviceable, but only just.

He wondered where all the
people were.

Distant truck noises answered
part of the question. An Army
six by six came bumping across
a bridge that led from the takeoff
strips to this parking area of the
airport. Five men got out next
to one of the ships. They glanced
at him but did not speak as they
began loading crates of some sort

148

GALAXY

of goods from the truck into the
aircraft, a four-engine, swept-
wing jet of what looked to Chand-
ler like an obsolete model. Per-
haps it was one of the early
Boeings. There hadn’t been many
of those in use at the time the
troubles began, too big and fast
for short hops, too slow to com-
pete over long distances with the
rockets. But, of course, with all
the destruction, and with no new
aircraft being built anywhere in
the world any more, no doubt
they were as good as could be
found.

The truckmen did not seem to
be possessed; they worked with
the normal amount of grunting
and swearing, pausing to wipe
sweat away or to scratch an itch.
They showed neither the intense
malevolent concentration nor the
wide-eyed idiot curiosity of those
whose bodies were no longer
their own. Chandler settled the
woolen cap over the brand on his
forehead, to avoid unpleasantness,
and drifted over toward them.

They stopped work and re-
garded him. One of them said
something to another, who nod-
ded and walked toward Chand-
ler. “What do you want?” he
demanded warily.

“I don’t know. I was going to
ask you the same question, I
guess.”

The man scowled. “Didn’t your
exec tell you what to do?”

“My what?”

The man paused, scratched and
shook his head. “Well, stay away
from us. This is an important
shipment, see? I guess you’re all
right or you couldn’t’ve got past
the guards, but I don’t want you
messing us up. Got enough
trouble already. I don’t know
why,” he said in the tones of an
old grievance, “we can’t get the
execs to let us know when they’re
going to bring somebody in. It
wouldn’t hurt them! Now here
we got to load and fuel this ship
and, for all I know, you’ve got
half a ton of junk around some-
where that you’re going to load
onto it. How do I know how much
fuel it’ll take? No weather, natu-
rally. So if there’s headwinds it’ll
take full tanks, but if there’s ex-
tra cargo I — ”

“The only cargo I brought
with me that I can think of is
a book,” said Chandler. “Weighs
maybe a pound. You think I’m
supposed to get on that plane?”

The man grunted non-commit-
tally.

“All right, suit yourself. Listen,
is there any place I can get some-
thing to eat?”

The man considered. “Well, I
guess we can spare you a sand-
wich. But you wait here. I’ll bring
it to you.”

He went back to the truck. A
moment later one of the others
brought Chandler two cold ham-

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

149

burgers wrapped in waxed paper,
but would answer no questions.

/"'HANDLER ate every crumb,
Sought and found a wash-
room in the wrecked building,
came out again and sat in the
sun, watching the loading crew.
He had become quite a fatalist.
It did not seem that it was in-
tended he should die immediate-
ly, so he might as well live.

There were large gaps in his
understanding, but it seemed
clear to Chandler that these men,
though not possessed, were in
some way working for the pos-
sessors. It was a distasteful con-
cept; but on second thought it
had reassuring elements. It was
evidence that whatever the
“execs” were, they were very pos-
sibly human beings — or, if not
precisely human, at least shared
the human trait of working by
some sort of organized effort to-
ward some sort of a goal. It was
the first non-random phenomenon
he had seen in connection with
the possessors, barring the short-
term tactical matters of mass
slaughter and destruction. It made
him feel — what he tried at once
to suppress, for he feared another
destroying frustration — a touch
of hope.

The men finished their work
but did not leave. Nor did they
approach Chandler, but sat in
the shade of their truck, waiting

for something. He drowsed and
was awakened by a distant sput-
ter of a single-engined Aerocoupe
that hopped across the building
behind him, turned sharply and
came down with a brisk little run
in the parking bay itself.

From one side the pilot climbed
down and from the other two men
lifted, with great care, a wooden
crate, small but apparently heavy.
They stowed it in the jet while
the pilot stood watching; then the
pilot and one of the other men
got into the crew compartment.
Chandler could not be sure, but
he "had the impression that the
truckman who entered the plane
was no longer his own master.
His movements seemed more sure
and confident, but above all it
was the mute, angry eyes with
which his fellows regarded him
that gave Chandler grounds for
suspicion. He had no time to
worry about that; foi; in the same
breath he felt himself occupied
once more.

He did not rise. His own voice
said to him, “You. Votever you
name, you fellow vit de book!
You go get de book verever. you
pud it and get on dat ship dere,
you see?” His eyes turned toward
the waiting aircraft. “And don’t
forget de book!”

He was released. “I won’t,” he
said automatically, and then re-
alized that there was no longer
anyone there to hear his answer.

150

GALAXY

When he retrieved the Gibran
volume from the car and ap-
proached the plane the loading
| crew said nothing. Evidently they
knew what he was doing — either
because they too had been given
[ instructions, or because they
r r were used to such things. He
paused at the wheeled stairs.
“Listen,” he said, “can you at
least tell me where I’m going?”

The four remaining men looked
at him silently, with the same
t angry, worried expression he had
i seen on their faces before. They
I did not answer, but after a mo-
ment one of them raised his arm
t and pointed.

West. Out toward the Pacific.
Out toward some ten million
square miles of nearly empty sea.

T ONG before they reached
their destination Chandler
had reasoned what it must be. He
was correct: It was the islands of
Hawaii.

Chandler knew that the pilot
and his coopted partner were up
forward, in the crew compart-
ment, but the door was locked
and he never saw them again.
Apart from them he was the only
living person on the plane.

The plane was lightly loaded
with cargo of unidentifiable sorts.
In the rear section, where once
tourist-class passengers had eaten
their complimentary tray meals
and planned their vacations, the

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

seats had been removed and a
thin scatter of crates and boxes
were strapped to the floor. In the
luxury of the forward section
Chandler sat, stared at the water
and drowsed. He seemed to be
always sleepy. Perhaps it was the
consequence of his exertions;
more likely it was a psychological
phenomenon. He was beyond
worry. He had reached that point
in emotional fatigue when the
sudden rattle of cannonfire or the
enemy’s banzai charge can no
longer flood the blood with adren-
alin. The glands are dry. The
emotions have been triggered too
often. Battle fatigue takes men
in many different ways, but in
Chandler it was only apathy. He
not only could not worry, he
could not even rouse himself to
feel hunger, although the prick-
ing of habit made him get up and
search the flight kitchen, unsuc-
cessfully, for food.

He had no idea how much time
had passed when the hiss of the
jets changed key.

The horizon dipped below the
wingtip and straightened again,
and he beheld land. He never saw
the airfield, only water, then
beach, then water again, then a
few buildings. Then there was a
roar of jets, with their clamshells
deflecting their thrust forward to
brake their speed, and then the
wheels were on the ground. As the
plane stopped he felt himself

151

once more possessed. It “was no
longer terrifying — though Chand-
ler was sure he was doomed.

Without knowing where he was
going or why he picked up the
ripped book, opened the cabin
exit and stepped down onto the
rolling steps that had immediate-
ly been brought into place. He
was conscious of a horde of men
swarming around the plane,
stripping it of its cargo, and won-
dered briefly at the rush; but he
could not stop to watch them, his
legs carried him swiftly across a
paved strip to where a police car
was cruising.

Chandler cringed inside, in-
stinctively, but his body did not
falter as it stepped into the path
of the car and raised its hand.

The police car jammed on its
brakes. The policeman at the
wheel, Chandler thought inside
himself, looked startled, but he
also looked resigned. “To de
South Gate, qvickly,” said
Chandler’s lips, and he felt his
legs carry him around to the door
on the other side.

There was another policeman
on the seat next to the driver. He
leaped like a hare to get the door
open and get out before Chand-
ler’s body got there. He made it
with nothing to stare. “Jack, you
go on, I’ll tell Headquarters,” he
said hurriedly. The driver nodded
without speaking. His lips were
white. He reached over Chandler

to close the door and made a
sharp U-turn.

As soon as the car was moving
Chandler felt himself able to move
his lips again.

“I — ” he said. “I don’t know ”

“Friend,” said the policeman,
“kindly keep your mouth shut.
‘South Gate,’ the exec said, and
South Gate is where I’m going.”

Chandler shrugged and looked
out the window . . . just in time
to see the jet that had brought
him to the islands once more
lumbering into life. It crept, wob-
bling its wingtips, over the
ground, picked up speed, roared
across taxi strips and over rough
ground and at last piled up
against an ungainly looking for-
eign airplane, a Russian jet by
its markings, in a thunderous
crash and ball of flame as its
fuel exploded. No one got out.

It seemed that traffic to Hawaii
was all one way.

VI

r | ''HEY roared through down-
town Honolulu with the
siren blaring and cars scattering
out of the way. At seventy miles
an hour they raced down a road
by the sea. Chandler caught a
glimpse of a sign that said “Hilo,”
but where or what “Hilo” might
be he had no idea. Soon there
were fewer cars; then there were
none but their own.

152

GALAXY

The road was a surburban high-
way lined with housing develop-
ments, shopping centers, palm
groves and the occasional center
of a small municipality, scatter-
ing helterskelter together. There
was a road like this extending in
every direction from every city
in the United States, Chandler
thought; but this one was some-
what altered. Something had been
there before them. About a mile
outside Honolulu’s outer fringe,
life was cut off as with a knife.
There were no people on foot,
and the only cars were rusted
wrecks lining the roads. The
lawns were ragged stands of
weeds in front of the ranch-type
homes.

It was evidently not allowed to
live here.

Chandler craned his neck. His
curiosity was becoming almost
unbearable. He opened his mouth,
but, f T said, “Shut up.’ ” rumbled
the cop without looking at him.
There was a note in the police-
man’s voice that impressed
Chandler. He did not quite know
what it was, but it made him
obey. They drove for another
fifteen minutes in silence, then
drew up before a barricade across
the road.

Chandler got out. The police-
man slammed the door behind
him, ripping rubber off his tires
with the speed of his U-turn and
acceleration back toward Hono-

lulu. He did not look at Chandler.

Chandler stood staring off after
him, in bright warm sunlight with
a reek of hibiscus and rotting
palms in his nostril. It was very
quiet there, except for a soft
scratchy sound of footsteps on
gravel. As Chandler turned to
face the man who was coming
toward him, he realized he had
learned one fact from the police-
man after all. The cop was scared
clear through.

Chandler said, “Hello,” to the
man who was approaching.

He too wore a uniform, but not
that of the Honolulu city police.
It was like U.S. Army suntans, but
without insignia. Behind him
were half a dozen others in the
same dress, smoking, chatting,
leaning against whatever was
handy. The barricades them-
selves were impressively thor-
ough. Barbed wire ran down the
beach and out into the ocean; on
the other side of the road, barbed
wire ran clear out of sight along
the middle of a side road. The gate
itself was bracketed with ma-
chine-gun emplacements.

The guard waited until he was
close to Chandler before speak-
ing. “What do you want?” he
asked without greeting. Chand-
ler shrugged. “All right, just wait
here,” said the guard, and began
to walk away again.

“Wait a minute! What am I
waiting for?” The guard shook

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

153

his head without stopping or
turning. He did not seem very in-
terested, and he certainly was
not helpful.

Chandler put down the copy of
The Prophet which he had car-
ried so far and sat on the ground,
but again he had no long time
to wait. One of the guards came
toward him, with the purposeful
movements Chandler had learned
to recognize. Without speaking
the guard dug into a pocket.
Chandler jumped up instinctive-
ly, but it was only a set of car
keys.

As Chandler took them the
look in the guard’s eyes showed
the quick release of tension that
meant he was free again; and
in that same moment Chandler’s
own body was occupied once
more.

He reached down and picked
up the book. Quickly, but a little
clumsily, his fingers selected a
key, and his legs carried him
toward a little French car parked
just the other side of the barrier.

/"'HANDLER was learning at
^ last the skills of allowing his
body to have its own way. He
couldn’t help it in any event, so
he was consciously disciplining
himself to withdraw his atten-
tion from his muscles and senses.
It involved queerly vertiginous
problems. A hundred times a
minute there was some unex-

pected body sway or movement
of the hand, and his lagging, i m _
prisoned mind would wrench at
its unresponsive nerves to put out
the elbow that would brace him,
or to catch itself with a step. He
had learned to ignore these
things. The mind that inhabited
his body had ways not his own of
maintaining balance and reach-
ing an objective, but they were
equally sure.

He watched his own hands
shifting the gears of the car. It
was a make he had never driven,
with a clutchless drive he did not
understand, but the mind in his
brain evidently understood it well
enough. They picked up speed in
great, gasoline-wasting surges.

Chandler began to form a pic-
ture of that mind. It belonged to
an older man, from the hesitancy
of its walk, and a testy one, from
the heedless crash of the gears as
it shifted. It drove with careless
slapdash speed. Chandler’s mind
yelled and flinched in his brain as
they rounded blind curves, where
any casual other motorist would
have been a catastrophe; but the
hand on the wheel and the foot
on the accelerator did not hesi-
tate.

Beyond the South Gate the
island of Oahu became abruptly
wild.

There were beautiful homes,
but there were also great, gap-
toothed spaces where homes had

154

GALAXY

once been and were no longer. It
seemed that some monstrous
Zoning Commissar had stalked
through the island with an eras-
er, rubbing out the small homes,
the cheap ones, the old ones; rub-
bing out the stores, rubbing out
the factories. This whole section
of the island had been turned into
an exclusive residential park.

It was not uninhabited. Chand-
ler thought he glimpsed a few
people, though since the direction
of his eyes was not his to control
it was hard to be sure. And then
the Renault turned into a lane,
paved but narrow. Hardwood
trees with some sort of blossoms,
Chandler could not tell what,
overhung it on both sides.

■ It meandered for a mile or so,
turned and opened into a great
vacant parking lot. The Renault
stopped with a squeal of brakes
in front of a door that was
flanked by bronze plaques: TWA
Flight Message Center.

Chandler caught sight of a
skeletal towering form overhead,
like a radio transmitter antenna,
as his body marched him inside,
up a motionless escalator, along
a hall and into a room.

His muscles relaxed.

He glanced around and, from
a huge couch beside a desk, a
huge soft body stirred and, gasp-
ing, sat up. It was a very fat old
man, almost bald, wearing a cor-
onet of silvery spikes.

He looked at Chandler without
much interest. “Vot’s your name?”
he wheezed. He had a heavy, in-
eradicable accent, like a Hapsburg
or a Russian diplomat. Chandler
recognized it readily. He had
heard it often enough, from his
own lips.

'T'HE man’s name was Koitska,
■*- he said in his accented
wheeze. If he had another name
he did not waste it on Chandler.
He took as few words as possible
to order Chandler to be seated
and to be still.

Koitska squinted at the copy
of Gibran’s The Prophet. He did
not glance at Chandler, but
Chandler felt himself propelled
out of his seat, to hand the book
to Koitska, then returning. Koit-
ska turned its remaining pages
with an expression of bored re-
pugnance, like a man picking off
his arm. He seemed to be waiting
for something.

A door closed on the floor be-
low, and in a moment a girl came
into the room.

She was tall, dark and not
quite young. Chandler, struck by
her beauty, was sure that he had
seen her, somewhere, but could
not place her face. She wore a
coronet like the fat man’s, inter-
twined in a complicated hairdo,
and she got right down to busi-
ness. “Chandler, is it? All right,
love, what we want to know is

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

155

what this is all about.” She in-
dicated the book.

A relief that was like pain
crossed Chandler’s mind. So that
was why he was here! Whoever
these people were, however they
managed to rule men’s minds,
they were not quite certain of
their perfect power. To them the
sad, futile Orphalese represented
a sort of annoyance — not im-
portant enough to be a threat —
but something which had proved
inconvenient at one time and
therefore needed investigating.
As Chandler was the only survi-
vor they had deemed it worth
their godlike whiles to transport
him four thousand miles so that
he might satisfy their curiosity.

Chandler did not hesitate in
telling them all about the people
of Orphalese. There was nothing
worth concealing, he was quite
sure. No debts are owed to the
dead; and the Orphalese had
proved on their own heads, at the
last, that their ritual of pain was
only an annoyance to the pos-
sessors, not a tactic that could
long be used against them.

It took hardly five minutes to
say everything that needed say-
ing about Guy, Meggie and the
other doomed and suffering in-
habitants of the old house on the
mountain.

Koitska hardly spoke. The girl
was his interrogator, and some-
times translator as well, when his

English was not sufficient to com-
prehend a point. With patient
detachment she kept the story
moving until Koitska with a bored
shrug indicated he was through.

Then she smiled at Chandler
and said, “Thanks, love. Haven’t
I seen you somewhere before?”
“I don’t know. I thought the
same thing about you.”

“Oh, everybody’s seen me. Lots
of me. But — well, no matter.
Good luck, love. Be nice to Koit-
ska and perhaps he’ll do as much
for you.” And she was gone.

Koitska lay unmoving on his
couch for a few moments, rub-
bing a fat nose with a plump
finger. “Hah,” he said at last.
Then, abruptly, “And now, de
qvestion is, vot to do vit you, eh?
I do not t’ink you can cook, eh?”

VW/'ITH unexpected clarity
** Chandler realized he was
on trial for his life. “Cook? No,
I’m afraid not. I mean, I can boil
eggs,” he said. “Nothing fancy.”
“Hah,” grumbled Koitska. “Vel.
Ve need a couple, three doctors,
but I do not t’ink you vould do.”
Chandler shook his head. “I’m
an electrical engineer,” he said.
“Or was.”

* “Vas?”

“I haven’t had much practice.
There has not been a great deal
of call for engineers, the last year
or two.”

“Hah.” Koitska seemed to con-

156

GALAXY

sider. “Vel,” he said, “it could be
. . . yes, it could be dat ve have
a job for you. You go back down-
stairs and — no, vait.” The fat
man closed his eyes and Chand-
ler felt himself seized and pro-
pelled down the stairs to what
had once been a bay of a built-in
garage. Now it was fitted up with
workbenches and the gear of a
radio ham’s dreams.

Chandler walked woodenly to
one of the benches. His own
voice spoke to him. “Ve got here
someplace — da, here is cirguit
diagrams and de specs for a
sqvare-vave generator. You know
vot dat is? Write down de an-
swer.” Chandler, released with a
pencil in his hand and a pad be-
fore him, wrote Yes. “Okay. Den
you build vun for me. I areddy
got vun but I vant another. You
do dis in de city, not here. Go
to ' Tripler, dey tells you dere
vere you can work, vere to get
parts, all dat. Couple days you
come out here again, I see if I
like how you build.”

Clutching the thick sheaf of
diagrams, Chandler felt himself
propelled outside and back into
the little car. The interview was
over.

He wondered if he would be
able to find his way back to
Honolulu, but that problem was
then postponed as he discovered
he could not start the car. His
own hands had already done so,

of course, but it had been so
quick and sure that he had not
paid attention; now he found that
the ignition key was marked only
in French, which he could not
speak. After trial and error he
discovered the combination that
would start the engine and un-
lock the steering wheel, and then
gingerly he toured the perimeter
of the lot until he found an exit
road.

It was close to midnight, he
judged. Stars were shining over-
head; there was a rising moon. He
then remembered, somewhat
tardily, that he should not be
seeing stars. The lane he had
come in on had been overhung
on both sides with trees.

A few minutes later he real-
ized he was quite lost.

Chandler stopped the car,
swore feelingly, got out and
looked around.

There was nothing much to
see. The roads bore no markers
that made sense to him. He
shrugged and rummaged through
the glove compartment on the
chance of a map; there was none,
but he did find what he had al-
most forgotten, a half-empty pack
of cigarettes. It had been — he
counted — nearly a week since
he had smoked. He lit up.

TT was a pleasant evening, too.

He felt almost relaxed.

He stood there, wondering just

PLAGUE OF PYTHONS

157

what might be about to happen
next — with curiosity more than
fear — and then he felt a light
touch at his mind.

It was nothing, really. Or noth-
ing that he could quite identify.
It was though he had been nudg-
ed. It seemed that someone was
about to usurp his body again,
but that did not develop.

As he had about decided to
forget it and get back in the car
he saw headlights approaching.

A low, lean sports car slowed
as it came near, stopping beside
him, and a girl leaned out, almost
invisible in the darkness. “There
you are, love,” she said cheer-
fully. “Thought I spotted some-
one. Lost?”

She had a coronet, and Chand-
ler recognized her. It was the
girl who had interrogated him.
“I guess I am,” he admitted.

The girl leaned forward.
“Come in, dear. Oh, that thing?
Leave it here, the silly little bug.”
She giggled as they drove away
from the Renault. “Koitska
wouldn’t like you wandering a-
round. I guess he decided to give
you a job?”

“How did you know?”

She said softly, “Well, love,
you’re here, you know. Other-
wise — never mind. What are
you supposed to be doing?”
“Going to Tripler, whatever
that is. In Honolulu, I guess.

TO BE CC

Then I have to build some radio
equipment.”

“Tripler’s actually on the other
side of the city. I’ll take you to
the gate; then you tell them
where you want to go. They’ll
take care of it.”

“I don’t have any money for
fare.”

She laughed. After a moment
she said, “Koitska’s not the worst.
But I’d mind my step if I were
you, love. Do what he says, the
best you can. You never know.
You might find yourself very
fortunate . .

“I already think that. I’m a-
live.”

“Why, love, that point of view
will take you far.” The sports
car slid smoothly to a stop at the
barricade and, in the floodlights
above the machine-gun nests,
she looked more closely at Chan-
dler. “What’s that on your fore-
head, dear?”

Somehow the woolen cap had
been lost. “A brand,” he said
shortly. “ ‘H’ for ‘hoaxer.’ I did
something when one of you
people had me, and they thought
I’d done it on my own.”

“Why — why, this is wonder-
ful!” the girl said excitedly. “No
wonder I thought I’d seen you
before. Don’t you remember?

I was in the forewoman at your
trial!”

— FREDERIK POHL

158

GALAXY

Robert was always there.
He had to be. He didn't
have anywhere else to go.

By MARGARET ST. CLAIR

Illustrated by RITTER

TJOBERT leaned on one of the
clouds and said, reproach-
fully, “You’re far too aggressive,
dear.”

“I know,” Roberta answered in
a small voice.

“It shows in everything you do,”
Robert continued. “Your voice,
the way you walk, everything.
You’d better watch out for it. It
will get you in trouble some day
. . . besides spoiling the illusion.”
Roberta drew breath in a little
gasp. Robert smiled. “What’s the
matter, anyhow?” he asked. “Are
you still envious of other women,
Roberta? You oughtn’t to be.
Now that we’re, well, married.
And everything.”

“Are we really married?” Ro-

berta wanted to know. “It seems
to me . . . sometimes ... that I
used to be happier.”

“Hush. Be quiet.” Robert
seemed about to chin himself on a
cloud and then thought better of
it. “Of course you’re happy.”

He leaned his elbows on the
pinkest of the cloud bands and
smiled at Roberta benevolently.
He looked, Roberta thought, like
a picture Roberta had had taken
when Roberta was little, as a little
Roberta cherub. Ever so pretty.
(Are cherubs boys or girls?)

The buzzer on the vizi-screen
at the foot of the big sunken tub .
(Robert always seemed to show
up when Roberta was taking a
bath) rang harshly. Roberta clam-

ROBERTA

159

bered out of the tub, picked up a
towel with one hand, and with
the other pressed a switch. The
face of the receptionist on duty at
the desk in the lobby became vis-
ible.

“A Mr. Rodvorello Dlag to see
you, Miss Prentice,” said the re-
ceptionist. “R-o-d-v-o-r-e-l-l-o
D-l-a-g. He says he knows you.
Shall I send him up?”

Roberta’s eyebrows arched
doubtfully. “Rov — ? Rob — ?” But
a glance at the ceiling showed that
Robert had gone. He might have
gone into one of the closets, which
was a good place for a skeleton to
hide itself. More likely he had
pulled a cloud in after him. Cuc-
koo Robert. Like a cuckoo in a
clock.

“Oh, have him come on up,”
Roberta told the image of the
receptionist’s face. “In about
twenty minutes. Even if I don’t
remember him.”

TJOBERT and Roberta were
waltzing around and around,
with Roberta’s long pink tulle
skirt whirling out behind, when
Mr. Dlag knocked.

Robert went away. Roberta
went to the door.

Mr. Dlag was an extraordinary
looking man. Roberta, peering at
him, tried to remember where
people who looked like that came
from. He was wearing a button-
hole flower made of brown feath-

ers, extremely large synthetic opal
cufflinks, and a suit of unusually
garish iridi-tweed. His manners,
though, were excellent.

“And how are you now, ah, Miss
Prentice?” he asked yhen they
were both seated. “Quite recov-
ered from your operation? Well
and happy, I trust?”

“Yes, I’m feeling well,” Roberta
admitted.

“Good! I’m glad to hear it,” Mr.
Dlag declared. His eyes, coal-
black against the deep whiteness
of his skin, twinkled. “It wasn’t
any' trouble for me. Just a ques-
tion of exerting a little influence
in the right quarters. And if it
made you happy — well! Any time
I’m too busy to help out a friend,
I’ll leave Earth.”

“Awfully good of you,” mur-
mured Roberta, who hadn’t the
foggiest idea what he was talking
about.

Mr. Dlag nodded. “I came to
bring you your ticket,” he said.
“You remember our little agree-
ment, of course. Here it is.” He
extended an envelope.

Roberta opened it. Inside there
was a very long ticket for Vega.
One way, on the S.S. Thor, Am-
sonia Star Lines.

Vega. So that was where Mr.
Dlag was from. Vega. Why hadn’t
Roberta realized it before? And
was he, like other Vegans, a pas-
sionate collector? Was his collec-
tion what he went on living for?

160

GALAXY

“How’s your collection, Mr.
Dlag?” Roberta asked brightly.

Mr. Dlag frowned. “Dear Miss
Prentice,” he said, “I thought you
understood. You won’t be sub-
ject to annoyance in any way.
You’re to stay on Needr — that’s
the Vegan planet — only a couple
of months. You will be a part of
my collection, of course. But you
won’t be aware of it.”

“You must have a very unusual
collection, Mr. Dlag,” Roberta
said.

Mr. Dlag seemed to expand
with pleasure. “I flatter myself, it
is an unusual idea,” he cried.
“Other Vegans collect postage
stamps, or coins, or obsolete radio
sets. I collect imitation things.

“That was what interested me
most, you know, when I came to
Earth — realizing how many Earth
things were imitations. Insects
that imitate other insects. Plants
that imitate other plants. Animals
that imitate plants. Plants that
imitate rocks. And half your arti-
facts imitate other things. It’s
amazing. There are almost no
imitation things on Needr, my
home.”

R OBERTA had folded up the
ticket and was putting it
away in a handbag. At the bottom
of the handbag there was a little
gun. It had been Robert’s birth-
day gift. (How had he got it? Sli-
ver guns were strictly illegal. But

ROBERTA

Robert could do all sorts of
things.)

“That’s very interesting,”
Roberta murmured. “I’m not quite
clear, though, Mr. Rov — Rob —
Mr. Dlag, how I fit into your col-
lection.”

Once more Mr. Dlag frowned.
“I thought you understood. Well
— ” he smiled deprecatingly —
“you see, Miss Prentice, you’re by
way of being an imitation your-
self.”

“An imitation?” Roberta
echoed. It was odd, at that word,
how much Mr. Dlag had begun
to resemble Robert. Robert, who
usually sat in the sky on a pink
cloud.

“Yes. Because of your opera-
tion, you know. You’re an imita-
tion woman now, Miss Prentice.
That’s why I helped you with
getting it.”

Roberta pulled the sliver gun
out of the handbag and shot Ve-
gan-Robert in the forehead with
it.

Since the forehead is in close
proximity to the brain, Robert
died almost immediately. Rober-
ta’s mouth could not help coming
open.

Oh, dear.

Oh, dear indeed. For killing
Robert was about as naughty a
thing as it was possible to do.
Naughty, naughty. Naughty. Left
Roberta hand slapped right
Roberta hand — the one with the

161

sliver gun — hard and repeatedly.
Naughty hand. It deserved to be
hurt.

But now what was to be done?
The big mahogany chest in the
bedroom was empty, except for
the plasti-mink coat Roberta had
ben planning to wear when the
weather got cold. Roberta took
the coat out and hung it on a
hanger in the closet. Then, catch-
ing Vegan-Robert by the back of
the jacket collar and the seat of
his synthi-tweed pants, Roberta
tugged him over to the chest and
tumbled him in. The lid closed
down on him with a neat bang.

There.

Having killed Robert was very
naughty, certainly. But now that
he was dead — well, it was rather
nice to have him gone perma-
nently.

Something seemed to have hap-
pened to time. It alternately
caught and then went forward in
big jerks, like a tape that sticks
in the machine. Roberta put on
makeup; it took hours, though it
was only five minutes by the
clock. Then it was after eleven,
with nothing happening in be-
tween at all, and time for the in-
jection. And bed.

TJOBERTA sterilized the syr-
inge in alcohol; it was easier
than boiling it in water. The
needle went into the tip of the
sterile ampoule and sucked up

fluid. Cotton scoured a spot on
one plump thigh.

“Theelin,” Robert said from a
purplish cloud bank. “An extract
of the female hormones. Your reg-
ular glandular therapy, designed
to make you a little more . . . what
you’re trying to be.”

Roberta’s heart gave a terrific
bound. “Go away. Go away.
You’re in the chest. You can’t be
here. You’re dead.”

“There’s somebody in the chest,
certainly,” Robert said with a
judicial air. “Who it is is another
matter. I rather doubt it’s me.

“You may be able to get away
with it. Lewd Vegan, corruptor
of innocent terrestrial youth, slain
by heartbroken victim — that
sort of thing. ’M, yes. But for
God’s sake, Roberta, don’t kill
anybody else. Mind, now.” He dis-
appeared.

Time gave another jerk and it
was morning. Roberta couldn’t be
said not to have slept, since there
had been no time to sleep in. But
what had been on the agenda at
midnight was still there now that
it was morning — how to make
Robert go away and stay away.

Well. If there weren’t any
Robert, there wouldn’t be any
Roberta. Would there, now?

Sleeping pills? There weren’t
nearly enough of them. There
wasn’t any gas in the kitchenette.
The bridges were a long way off
to jump from. And a hanging

162

GALAXY

weight would break down the
chandelier. But in the drawer in
the kitchen there was a knife.

Roberta drew the paring knife
lightly over one wrist. It hurt. It
would hurt an awful lot, really.
But it might hurt . . . somebody
else worse.

Roberta was making a second
attempt when the buzzer on the
vizi-screen rang. The noise was
startlingly loud and harsh.
Roberta jumped so hard that the
paring knife shot out of the in-
flicting hand, into the sink and
down into the garbage reduction
unit, which happened — but how
odd! — which somehow happened
to be turned on.

The knife was chewed up al-
most immediately. The buzzer
went on ringing.

XT was the clerk at the desk in

the lobby again, and she had
another caller for Miss Prentice.

Clement Thomas was a small,
slight man, quite ordinary except
for his eyes, which were green,
bright and interesting. He said he
wanted to see Miss Prentice for a
few moments about a personal
matter.

They talked about the weather
for a while, and then Mr. Thomas
(like what’s-his-name yesterday)
said he hoped Miss Prentice was
feeling well and happy.

“Yes,” said Roberta.

“That’s good news,” said Mr.

Thomas. He cleared his throat.
“You know, Miss Ptentice, there’s

been a recession — - depression

whatever they’re calling it now.
Times have been rather bad for
me professionally.”

“Bad for other people too,” said
Roberta, thinking of Mr. Dlag in
the chest.

“Yes, I suppose.” Once more
Mr. Thomas cleared his throat.
“And of course I’ve been some-
what distressed by thinking about
our professional, hum, association.
As you know, the operation I p3r-
formed on you was strictly illegal,
though it was performed at your
urgent request. If I were to go to
the authorities, I could clear my
conscience . . . and no doubt get
off with a light sentence. But that
would mean trouble for you.” Mr.
Thomas cocked his head and sim-

I

pered engagingly.

Oper — ? “There’s nothing so
terrible about an abortion,”
Roberta answered.

“Abortions?” Mr. Thomas
seemed startled. His simper dis-
appeared. It looked, Roberta
thought, as if the mask he had on
over his face was getting thin. He
laughed. “An abortion, my dear,
is something you’ll never need.
Never in this world.”

He started to laugh again, and
checked himself. “Don’t you re-
member?” he said to Roberta, who
was fidgeting with the clasp of the
handbag and wondering who Mr.

[

Thomas really was, under his
mask. “Honestly, don’t you re-
member? You came to me six
months or so ago, recommended
by a certain, hum, alien, and
asked for my professional services.
Your name was Robert Bayliss
then. You had me perform a sex-
reversal op — ”

This time there was no possible
doubt. He wasn’t Clement Thom-
as, he was Robert. The person sit-
ting opposite surgeon-Robert shot
him in the throat.

Since the throat is further from
the brain than the forehead is, it
took Robert No. 2 quite a lot
longer to die than it had taken
Mr. Dlag, yesterday. Sliver-gun
darts act directly on the nervous
system. Robert tied himself up
in convulsion after convulsion,
horrid masculine knots, before he
relaxed finally. But there. He was
dead.

Roberta put Robert in the
chest beside yesterday’s Robert.
It was a tight fit. There was trou-
ble with the lid.

The bodies were still being
wrestled with when, on a bank of
black clouds very low down on
the ceiling, Robert appeared. He
looked angry. “I told you not to,”
he said.

Roberta, trying yet again to
make Mr. Dlag’s left arm bend
backwards, made no reply. Rob-
ert, chewing on his lower lip, as-
cended slowly to the zenith of

the ceiling. “Don’t waste time with
that,” he said at last. “You can’t
possibly get away with it. Get
your suitcases, Roberta, and start
packing. Hurry up.”

“But, Robert — ”

“Yes?”

“Why do I have to go away? I
like this place.”

“What are you using for a
brain? If we want to go on living
even a little longer, we’re going to
have to run. And run.”

He disappeared, drawing the
black cloud in after him. Roberta
remained staring up at the ceil-
ing, head thrown back, Adam’s
apple prominent.

YV7HAT was the use of hoping
any longer? No matter where
they went — Venus, Vega, Arctur-
us, even M 31 — it would be the
same. Robert would go along with
Roberta.

Roberta’s jaw set. No, that
wasn’t quite true. After Mr. Dlag
had died, Robert had been dead
for a little while. It might be a
matter of keeping on trying.

If you killed people enough,
you would — it was reasonable,
wasn’t it? — you would get
through all the masks they wore
to the person behind them. At last.
To the one you had always tried
to destroy. To him.

“I’ll kill you yet, Robert,”
Roberta said between his teeth.

— MARGARET ST. CLAIR

164

GALAXY

ROBERTA

165

Bimmie says people are stupid. Bimmie
says he can help them — but they're not
really worth his trouble , Bimmie says!

By SYDNEY VAN SCYOC

June 27, 1982 Bimmie said to do
this, keep a diary. I said, Cows?
He said, You deaf, woman? A
book! Then I remembered, only I
haven’t seen one. It’s for when he’s
famous. Then we can have it pub-
lished anytime we need money.

I’d better tell about us. I’m
short, sort of cute, and I cook
good. Bimmie’s tall and skinny,
he likes to eat. He’s 18, I’m 16.
We got married 22 days ago. In-
stead of a fancy wedding, Bimmie
told my folks, Give us money.

He needed the money for his
laboratory. It’s in the basement.
It’s what’ll make him famous.

June 31, 1982 We got a cat and
dog. They’re black and two
months old. I wanted red collars.
Bimmie said, Don’t waste my
money, woman.

,, Bimmie wanted them down in
his laboratory. He said that’d be
. proper conditions. I said, No, I’ll
leave if you do and you’ll have to
' eat capsules.

The cat’s he, the dog’s she.

Bimmie doesn’t want them out-

-JR :

■ side, ever.

July 3, 1982 We thought Bim-
mie’s folks’d change their minds.
But they said, Finally and con-
clusively, we won’t. Bimmie says
he doesn’t want to go to college if
they’re stingy because we got
married. He already knows every-
thing important.

■ ’

s' • -5

BIMMIE SAYS

He wants me to finish school. I
can finish in December. I thought
when you got married you didn’t
have to, just slept late and fixed
your hair.

July 9, 1982 The puppy’s Susta,
the cat’s Sup. Susta’s jealous be-
cause Sup jumps on the couch,
and she can’t.

Bimmie’ll have to make pills
for Susta. She hides from his
needle. She’ll be small. That’s
good, Bimmie says.

August 17, 1982 He just married
me to cook! Every night he’s in
his laboratory. I’m always in this
stupid, ugly house.

August 18, 1982 Susta won’t
change for a long time. Bimmie
has pills now.

September 1, 1982 School started.
Frankie’s still stuck on me. He
says I’m sexy, that’s why Bimmie
married me. I said, He married
me for my cooking. He laughed.

September 11, 1982 I felt funny
again. I stopped by Momma’s.
She bets she knows what it is.
She knew after ten days.

September 15, 1982 I had to ask
the school nurse if it was that. She
said, Yes, two weeks. I hope she’s
wrong. Babies are work. She said,
But the fulfillment. I said, Chang-

'Sygsgi

: < ‘‘ : ■

ing soppy diapers is what you
call fulfillment?

It doesn’t show. Frankie winked
at me.

September 17, 1982 The cat
climbed those lace curtains Bim-
mie’s mother gave us. Bimmie
said it was my job to watch him. I
said, That’s a stupid way to spend
my life. He said, I didn’t marry
you to have you sit around and
do nothing.

Susta watched Sup and whined.
She wants to be a cat.

September 27, 1982 Bimmie read
my diary. He said there wasn’t a
June 31. He says to tell more
about his work. It won’t make
money if he’s not in it.

I told him about the baby. He
said, Whoopee! He got some ob-
stetrics books.

October 5, 1982 Bimmie expects
the baby to kick already. I’m glad
it doesn’t! He made the puppy’s
pills tonight.

October 7, 1982 I let them out-
side. The smell in the house turns
my stomach. I’m afraid to take the
pills Bimmie made me.

October 9, 1982 I let them out
again. There’s a black dog next
door with a long nose, ears like
rosebuds and white feet. Susta
was scared. Sup hissed.

October 25, 1982 Bimmie’s so
nice. He took me to a tridiversion.
He hates them. He said, They’re
for the cloddy-minded masses. I
said, Well, what are we?

I want a tridiversion wall. Bim-
mie says, No. We had a fight.

October 30, 1982 I took a pill
Bimmie made. I felt good.

I let them out. It beats cleaning
up. Susta played with that dog.

November 7, 1982 I went to Dr.
Brantly. He hypnotized me. I
don’t remember it. *

December 13, 1982 Susta’s leav-
ing spots. I thought, She’s hurt.
Bimmie explained and said, Don’t
let her out. He wants to wait till
next time to have puppies. He
said, The treatment must take full
effect first. He explained but I
didn’t understand.

January 5, 1983 I’m out of school.
It’s boring. Momma says I’m too
young to settle down. She’s crazy.
I’m sixteen.

January 11, 1983 Bimmie’s read-
ing more obstetrics books. Hypno-
tism too. He tried to hypnotize
me, but I went to sleep.

January 14, 1983 I wish Momma
would stop. She said, Where’re
you going to put a baby, with only
one bedroom. She cried and called

168

GALAXY

me Baby. Gosh! She said, You
shouldn’t have cats around babies,
you’ll have to give him away.

Bimmie heard, from the bed-
room. He came out. He said, I am
conducting an important scientific
experiment with the cat and dog.
I would as soon give away the
baby. Momma got white under
her plasti-skin. She said, Bimmie,
you’re a monster for experiment-
ing on dumb animals. And for re-
jecting your own child.

Then Sup climbed the curtains
Momma gave us. She shrieked,
You’re ungrateful! and huffed
out.

She came back later, asking us
to forgive her. She said she
wanted to help, since we’re both
still children. Well!

I do wonder where we’ll put the
baby. Maybe on the couch.

February 17, 1983 I had to tell
Bimmie I was letting them out.
Sup fought with the dog next
door. Bimmie got mad. He told
me, They must have a controlled
environment. I said, It’s hard for
me to bend over to clean up.
Finally he said he’d clean up and
wasn’t it funny Sup and that dog
knew they were rivals.

I didn’t know myself.

March 17, 1983 I saw Dr. Brantly
today. He says I’m fine. I tried to
remember him putting me in the
trance, but I couldn’t.

April 19, 1983 Saw Dr. Brantly.
Sup pulled the curtains down.
Susta isn’t jealous any more, she’s
playing with a string.

May 9, 1983 I’m writing this next
day. Last night I had this sharp
pain. I said, Bimmie, call Dr.
Brantly. I remember him looking
at me funny. That’s all I remem-
ber until I woke up in the hospi-
tal. Bimmie was sitting beside me,
looking proud. I asked him,
What’s happened? He grinned.
We have a nine-pound son, he
said. I named him after the man
who delivered him. I said, Did I
faint? That wasn’t the way it was
explained, just that Dr. Brantly
would put me in a trance. Bimmie
was too busy grinning to say, then
he had to go to work. The doctor
came in. I said, It wasn’t bad, I
only felt one pain. He frowned. I
said, Can I see the baby? He said,
Later. He went out too.

I thought I must have cussed.

I didn’t understand until the
nurse brought the baby. He had a
little plastic bracelet that said
Bimford Fost, Jr. He was red and
squalling. I felt like doing the
same, because I knew why Bim-
mie had been studying those ob-
stetrics books. He has to try
everything!

May 21, 1983 I’m seventeen to-
day. Bimmie says to write more.
He thinks that’s all I have to do.

BIMMI E SAYS

169

The baby sleeps all the time he
isn’t crying. I like him, only I’m
tired of diapers.

Susta gets three pills every day.
She plays with them, then eats
them. Bimmie said last night, It
won’t be long until my experiment
bears fruit. He said to write that
here.

June 3, 1983 Susta tried to climb
the curtains.

June 5, 1983 Bimmie wanted to
give the baby some pills he made.
I said, No. He said, They’ll make
him smarter, woman. I said, He’s
enough trouble dumb.

Today was our first anniver-
sary. Bimmie wouldn’t buy me
anything.

June 9, 1983 We fought about a
dryer. After he left I said, For
that I’ll let your animals out. The
dog next door came up. Susta
arched her back.

June 21, 1983 I’ve been putting
them out every day.

June 25, 1983 Bimmie says to
write every day, his experiment is
coming to a head. I can’t see any-
thing happening. Susta gets six
pills now.

June 27, 1983 The dog’s that way
again. Bimmie said, At last my
experiment shall be carried to

completion. Not that I care for
fame and riches, no, I care only
for the accomplishment of some-
thing man has never before
achieved. I said he didn’t sound
natural. He said, Put it down that
way, woman.

June 29, 1983 Bimmie wanted to
feed the baby. I caught him be-
fore he gave him a pill. We
fought. He said, Who delivered
him? I said, I made him, and
pointed to my stomach. I said, I
won’t have you using him like a
guinea pig.

July 4, 1983 Bimmie says tomor-
row we’ll shut them up in the
basement.

July 5, 1983 The funniest thing.
Bimmie said, You put them in the
basement. Then he left. I thought,
I’ll just take them out while I
hang diapers. But when we went
out, three dogs came up. I said,
Scat! I couldn’t chase them be-
cause I had my arms full of dia-
pers, because Bimmie won’t buy
me a basket. They came closer,
edging around. I stomped my feet
and yelled. The dog next door
came and growled. Then Sup
hissed at him. This was the
first the other three saw Sup. He
hunched up, spitting and intend-
ing to chase them off. Only they
took out after him instead. He
ran off with four dogs after him.

170

GALAXY

I couldn’t do anything, my arms
were full.

July 6, 1983 Bimmie didn’t think
it was funny. He yelled, What are
you, stupid? Didn’t you know
dogs would come around? Didn’t
you know dogs chase cats? He
took the car and called, Kitty,
kitty, all over town. No luck. I
said, Get another cat. He said,
This one is used to Susta. I said,
There’ll be another time. He
stared at me and said Susta’s sys-
tem would tolerate only so much
of the stuff he’s been giving her.
He can’t give her any more after
next month. He’ll have to wait
another year. Then he went look-
ing again.

That was last night. Maybe
he’ll come home tonight.

July 7, 1983 He hasn’t. Bimmie’s
biting his fingernails. He’d bite
harder if he knew what happened
today.

I thought Susta was asleep
when I went to hang diapers. I
had my arms clear full. When I
opened the door, Susta shot past
me. I yelled at her, but she went
flying down the street, and I saw
that dog next door take off behind
her. I thought first thing, It’s Bim-
mie’s fault for not buying a dryer.

I hung the clothes fast. After
all, nothing could happen in such
a short time. Then I started up
the street calling, Here Susta! But

the baby was alone, I had to hurry
home.

She came back in half an hour.
I didn’t tell Bimmie yet.

July 8, 1983 I didn’t tell him, still.
He was mad because he had to
pay to get Sup out of the pound.
Bimmie salved his ears, they were
tom, and put them in the base-
ment. He said, Now!

July 15, 1983 Bimmie says to
write every day. It’s dull, them in
the basement. They come up to-
morrow.

July 23, 1983 Susta acts funnier
than ever. She rubs my legs when
I’m cooking. She keeps wetting
her paws and rubbing her face.

August 3, 1983 Today I caught
Susta sharpening her claws on the
couch. I said, Bimmie, look at the
crazy dog, thinks she’s a cat. He
frowned. He only has one pimple
now, he’s kind of handsome. I
said, Isn’t it cute? Bimmie went
downstairs. I think he was wor-
ried.

August 11, 1983 Susta’s getting
big. I let her sleep with the baby.
Bimmie says, Whoopee! It
worked! I’m scared to tell him
now.

August 12, 1983 Susta rubs my
leg when she’s hungry. Then she

BIMMIE SAYS

171

sits and switches her tail for a
long time.

August 17, 1983 Susta meowed
today. I was fixing dinner. She
looked up and said, Meow. It
wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Bimmie’s afraid she’ll have kit-
tens. That isn’t what he’s trying
to do.

September 5, 1983 Susta wanted
to go down in the basement this
afternoon. When I called her for
supper she came up with her
stomach flat. Bimmie and I went
down. Susta ducked back in a hole
in the wall. There’s a sort of little
cave. We said, They must be in
there. We got a flash, and we
could see little black balls. Bim-
mie couldn’t reach them.

Bimmie kept talking about
how his experiment is going to
revolutionize agriculture.

September 6, 1983 I can hear her
meowing to them. We can see
them with the flash. We can’t tell
anything yet.

September 7, 1983 He’ll buy a
typewriter but not a dryer! He’s
going to write a book about his
experiment. He expects me to
type it.

September 10, 1983 She still
won’t bring them out. She purred
today, rusty-like. Bimmie says,

sometimes, It had to work. Other
times he bites his nails.

He gave me ten pages to type.
I thought I’d better.

September 13, 1983 I went down
to call Susta and I saw them.
There were five, wobbling every-
where. They’re the cutest fat
things. I picked one up, and then
I felt sick. He had a long nose and
little rosebud ears and white feet.
He looked like the dog next door.

All of them do. They’re all
puppies. Nothing else, just pup-
pies.

I put them in a box and took
them upstairs.

Bimmie’s working tonight. I’ll
go to bed before he comes’ home.

September 14, 1983 He raved all
morning and tromped around. I
said, Shut up or I’ll leave and
you’ll have to eat capsules. He
said, I could eat dog food! Then
he wanted to see my diary. I said,
No. But he yanked out all the
drawers and found it.

I took the baby and went to
Momma’s.

It was suppertime when I came
home. He was on the couch with
Sup and Susta and the puppies.

He didn’t act mad, just nasty-
nice. So you came home, he said.
I never realized how limited you
were, Listie. Your diary’s shown
me a lot. Can you at least find
homes for the puppies?

172

GALAXY

I said, I guess. I put the baby
down. He hadn’t thrown anything
or burned my diary.

He said, Good, then. I’ve fixed
supper.

He had hamburger, frozen pie
and hot chocolate. Some of it
tasted bad. I didn’t say anything.

September 15, 1983 I asked Bim-
mie, Should I quit my diary? He
said, Yes. Then, No, keep on. I
asked, was he doing another ex-
periment? He said, Not yet. I
said, Bim better not start talking
early. He said, You don’t think I’d
experiment with my own child? I
didn’t know. He said, Bim might
be smart anyway. I said, He might
be, he’s your son. It was a good
compliment.

September 17, 1983 Bimmie

wants to learn cooking. He said,
You have to work hard, hanging
diapers. It will help if I can cook.

I’ll teach him hot chocolate
first. His fixing tastes awful.

October 5, 1983 I have little to
report. Bimford, Jr. is flourishing.
The puppies are adorable. Susta
and Sup tend them jointly.

Bimmie has no new project. He
has thrown all his energies into
cooking. He does quite well, ex-
cept for hot chocolate, which still
tastes of chemicals.

I never, until yesterday, real-
ized the intellectual and sensual

joy to be derived from delving
into Greek drama.

November 9, 1983 Bimford, Jr. is
six months old today. Since I gave
up the last puppy, the house
seems barnlike in its emptiness. I
mentioned the fact to Bimford.

His glance was speculative. “I
have some money saved. Want a
tridiversion wall?”

I was horrified. “Whatever for?”

He shrugged. “Maybe you’d
like to go to the library. Get some-
thing to read.”

I considered. “Perhaps I will,” I
said. “There isn’t much for me to
do, hang diapers and push but-
tons. Automation has almost com-
pletely eliminated the housewife’s
traditional chores.”

I left Bimford, Jr. with Mother
and walked to the library. I asked
the librarian to show me about.

“What are you interested in?”
she inquired.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Do
you have any good recent works
on chemistry or perhaps nuclear
physics?”

She raised her eyebrows but
conducted me to the proper shelf.
After finding several interesting
volumes, I also checked out a vol-
ume on cookery for Bimford. His
hot chocolate doesn’t improve,
despite nightly practice.

He tells me he is working on a
new project.

— SYDNEY VAN SCYOC

BIMMIE SAYS

173

WHO

DARES

A

BULBUR

EAT?

By GORDON R. DICKSON
Illustrated by SCHELLING
Aliens needn't look like
men. They can come in any
shape, size — or flavor!

I

U]VfE!” said Lucy. “At an Am-
bassadorial Banquet!”
“Don’t be like that now,” said
Tom, pausing in the night shad-
ow of a ten-foot-high alien plant,
something in the shape of a bear-
trap. He took a last couple of
drags from his cigaret and
ground it out underfoot, on the
footpath of terrazzo tile.

“How should I be?”
“Nonchalant,” said Tom. “You
do this sort of thing every day.
Ho-hum.”

“But certainly the Jaktal Am-
bassador knows you’re only a
third assistant secretary in the
Foreign Office’s Department of
New Governments — ”

“We hope they won’t know me
at all. Heh-heh.”

“You sound nervous, honey.”
“I am not nervous.”

“Then why are you biting your
nails?”

“I am not biting my nails. I
never bite my nails. I just thought
I had something stuck between
my front teeth, that’s all. I don’t
know why you always keep talk-
ing about me biting my nails,
when you know as well as I do
. . . Ah, good evening, Spandul.
My card. I am Thomas Whit-
worth Reasoner, and this is my
mate, Lucy Sue Reasoner. Be-
ware the zzatz.”

“You are welcome, sorr!” hissed
the Spandul, which was about
three feet high, black, lean as
a toothpick, and had a mouth
full of vicious looking needle-
sharp teeth. It stood just within
the golden glow of the light from
the high arched doorway to the
Jaktal Embassy in Washington.
Its large eyes glittered at Lucy.
“Welcome alssso, Lady. Enter
please. Here you will be safe
from zzatz.”

It took their cloaks and they
proceeded on through the en-
trance into a long, high-ceilinged
hall, already well-filled with hu-
mans and aliens of all varieties,
all in evening dress.

“What’s ‘zzatz’?” muttered
Lucy in Tom’s ear.

“Means ‘a most unfortunate
fate’,” muttered Tom back. “Ah,
good evening, Monsieur Pour-
toit,” he said in French, “I don’t
believe you’ve met my wife.” And
he introduced Lucy to a tall thin
gentleman with a sad face and
a broad red ribbon crossing his
white dress shirt under a dinner
jacket. The gentleman acknowl-
edged the introduction graceful-
ly-

“Elle est charmante,” he said,
bowing to Lucy.

“Why, thank you, Mr. Ambas-
sador!” said Lucy. “I can see — ”

“However if you’ll excuse us,”
said Tom, catching Lucy by the
hand, “we must be going.”

WHO DARES A BULBUR EAT?

175

“Of course,” said M. Pourloit.
Tom towed Lucy off.

“Well, all I was going to say
was — ” whispered Lucy.

“Ah, Brakt Kul Djok! May I
present my wife, Mrs. Lucy Sue
Reasoner?”

“Well, well, honored I am posi-
tive!” boomed a large alien,
looking something like a walrus
with a stocking cap on. “A fine
young lady, I can see at a glance,
hey, boy?” The walrus-sized el-
bow joggled Tom almost off his
feet. “See you coming up in the
world, hey? Hey? Wonder what
type entertainment and food this
Jaktal puts out, hah? Never tell
about these new alien types,
hey, ho?”

nnOM laughed heartily and
they moved on, Tom intro-
ducing Lucy every few feet to
some new human or alien of the
diplomatic circle in Washington.
Finally they found themselves at
the punchbowl, and were able to
fill a couple of glasses and find
a small alcove out of the crowd.

“What I don’t understand,”
said Lucy, “is how they can have
a banquet for so many different
kinds of people and aliens. I
should think — ”

“Well, they do have a number
of different foods for those who
can’t eat anything but their own
special diet. And of course it’s
necessary to stay clear of what

might offend anyone,” said Tom,
after a large swallow of the
punch. “But you’d be surprised
how much in common tastes are
among different intelligent, ani-
mal life forms. It’s all flesh and
plant food, in every case.”

“But don’t some of them
taste . . .?” said Lucy.

“Some, of course,” said Tqm.
“But a lot of alien foods are quite
tasty. I’ve liked all sorts of di-
verse items I’ve run into.”

“Oh!” said Lucy.

“What’s wrong?”

“What do you think’s in this
punch?” said Lucy, examining
her glass with suspicion.

“Fruit juice and alcohol. Now,”
said Tom, “let’s just run over the
schedule for the evening. First,
we’ll be having entertainment.”
“Oh, Tom, wait a minute,” said
Lucy, interrupting. “Listen. How
sad!”

“What?” he said — and then
he heard it. A voice, around the
corner from their alcove and
through an archway leading back,
was pouring out a thin, sad
thread of song. He stiffened sud-
denly. “Wait a minute. I’ll see.”
He got up and went around
the corner. Through the archway
he could see a farther doorway
from which light was showing. He
went forward and looked into the
lighted room beyond. At this
moment Lucy bumped into him
from behind.

176

GALAXY

66T TOLD you to wait for me!”
he whispered angrily at

her.

“You did not. You said, ‘wait
a minute’. Anyway,” said Lucy,
“there’s nothing here but that
great big jelly mold on the table.”
And she pointed to an enormous
three-tiered mass of what seemed
to be pink, green and yellow gel-
atine on a silver box set on a
white tablecloth. The tablecloth
was on a table which was the
only furniture in the room.

“You know what I meant!”
said Tom. “And somebody was
singing here.”

“It was I,” said the jelly mold
in sweet and flawless tones of
English.

Lucy stared at it. Tom was the
first to recover.

“May I present my wife?” he
said. “Mrs. Lucy Sue Reasoner.
I am James Whitworth Reasoner,
Third Assistant Secretary in the
Foreign Office Earth Department
of New Governments.”

“I’m awfully pleased to meet
you,” said the jelly mold. “I am
Kotnick, a Bulbur.”

“Was it a Bulbur song you
were singing?” asked Lucy.

“Alas,” said Kotnick, “it is a
Jaktal song. A little thing I com-
posed myself but sung, of course,
in Jaktal — though unfortunate-
ly with a heavy Bulbur accent.”

“But you sing so beautifully!”
said Lucy. “What would it sound

like if you sang it in Bulbur?”
“Alas,” said Kotnick, “there is
no Bulbur to sing it in. There
is only Jaktal.”

Lucy looked bewildered.

“You don’t understand,” Tom
said to her. “There are a number
of intelligent races on the Jaktal
planets. But the Jaktal are the
ruling ones. The language and
everything takes its name from
the rulers.”

“Indeed, yes,” said the Bulbur.
“And properly so.”

“I knew about Spanduls, and
Gloks, and Naffings,” said Tom,
looking at it. “But we haven’t
heard much about you Bulburs
compared to the rest of the in-
ferior races of the Jaktal.”

The Bulbur turned pink all
over.

“Pardon my immodesty,” it
said, “but I have come especially
for the occasion.”

“Ah?” said Tom. He stepped
closer to the Bulbur and lowered
his voice. “Perhaps, then, you can
tell me — ”

“Did the sorr and lady wisssh
somesing?” interrupted a ' sharp,
hissing voice. The two humans
turned abruptly to see a Spandul
like the one that had admitted
them to the embassy. It was
standing in the doorway. Beside
it was a sort of four-foot worm
with fang-like teeth curving down
from its upper lip.

“Oh!” said Tom. “No. Nothing.

WHO DARES A BULBUR

EAT?

177

Nothing at all. We heard this
Bulbur singing and wandered in
to meet it.”

“It ssshould not sssing!” hissed
the Spandul, looking at the Bul-
bur, which quivered and went al-
most colorless.

U \X7 ELL ’ it wasn’t really
singing. Sort of just hum-
ming. Well, we’ll have to be get-
ting back to the punch bowl.
Glad to have met you, Kotnick.”
Still talking, Tom herded Lucy
before him past the Spandul and
the worm-like being and out into
the shadowy area giving on the
hall. The worm-like being slith-
ered past them into the room and
the Spandul fell in beside the

humans, its needly teeth glitter-
ing at them.

“Guestsss,” it hissed, “will find
it mossst comfortable in main
hall area.”

“I imagine you’re right,” said
Tom. “We’ll trot on back. Nice
of you to show us the way. See
you later, then. May there be no
zzatz beneath this roof tonight.”

“There will be no zzatz be-
neasss ssis roof tonight,” replied
the Spandul, fixing them with its
glittering eyes as they moved out
into the hall.

“Well,” said Tom. “How about
another glass of punch, Lucy?”

“I should say not,” said Lucy.
She took hold of his sleeve and
led him back around to the pri-

178

GALAXY

L

II

vacy of their alcove. “Now, sup-
pose you tell me what’s going on.”

“Going on?” said Tom.

“Yes, going on,” said Lucy.
“And you might as well tell me
now because I’m going to keep
after you until you do tell me. I
thought we were just going to a
banquet. You didn’t give me any
notion that it was something un-
dercover or something like that.
Now I want you to tell me right
now — ” she broke off. “What
are you making faces like that
for?”

Tom, besides making faces,
was scribbling on a piece of paper
torn from his checkpocket. He
passed it to her.

Will you keep quiet? the paper
read. The walls have ears. I can’t
tell you. It’s top secret.

“Oh!” gasped Lucy. Tom took
the paper from her hands and
held it up to her lips.

“Eat it!” he whispered.

“I certainly will not!” whis-
pered back Lucy, revolted.

“Then I’ll have to.” said Tom.
He took it, and he did.

“Oh!” said Lucy, impressed.
Tom was looking at her in an
unusual way. She shrank back a
little.

“Shall we dance?” said Tom.

“D-dance?”

His eyebrows wigwagged an-
grily at her.

“Oh, dance!” she said. “Of
course!”

T^OM led her out across the hall
and into a sort of garden
area where a band was playing.
When they were well out into
the middle of the dance floor, he
put his lips close to her ear and
murmured into it.

“You might be able to help
after all.”

“Yes?” whispered Lucy.

“The Office Upstairs,” whis-
pered Tom, “is very concerned
about this Jaktal race. Six months
ago, we didn’t even know they
existed. Now we suddenly dis-
cover they have a spatial empire
at least as large as ours. Not
only that, but the Jaktal them-
selves — I mean the dominant
race — seem to have a conqueror
psychology, judging by their ex-
pansion and the intelligent races
like the Spanduls, Naffings, and
Gloks.”

“Was that one of them — that
worm-like thing with the fangs?”
Lucy asked.

“A Naffing,” said Tom. “They
are not much more intelligent
than an adult chimp. But danger-
ous. But to get back to the im-
portant part of the business,
recent information seems to in-
dicate that even with our alien
allies, we’d be at the mercy of
the Jaktal empire, if they decided
to move against us right now.”

“Would they?” Lucy shivered.

WHO DARES A BULBUR EAT?

179

“We don’t know. That’s it. •
Their ambassador talks peaceful
relations; but we can’t make this
match up with the character he
and his subservient races show.
You’ll see what I mean when you
get a look at Bu Hjark, the Am-
bassador.”

“But what’s it all got to do with
us — with you?”

“Well, you remember how they
thought we did a good job with
that Oprinkian*? Well, there’s a
new addition to the Embassy
here. That Bulbur we just saw.
He — or it, we don’t even know
that much yet — seems entirely
different from the rest of the
crew here. So what does it mean?
What’s his place in the organiza-
tion? What does his showing up
here mean in terms of the Jaktal
attitude toward us and our alien
allies?”

“I see what you mean,” whis-
pered Lucy. “Ouch!”

“What happened?”

“You just stepped on my toe.”
“Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s all right. Go on.”

66TT’S hard to concentrate on
two things at once. As I
was saying, the Office Upstairs
thought I might be able to get
the information where somebody
better known in our diplomatic

•REX AND MR. REJILLA, Galaxy,
January 1958

corps might fail. Easier for me to
be inconspicuous. Of course,
that’s why I brought you along,
too.”

“Well, I like that!”

“I’m sorry. But that’s the way
diplomacy is. Now, we’ve had
one stroke of luck already. We’ve
found out where the Bulbur is,
and we know he’s off without a
crowd around him. The next step
is up to me. I have to have a
chance to talk to him alone.”
“Oh, I see.”

“Yes,” said Tom, “and I think
that’s where you can help.”

“Oh, good.”

“Do you think you can get
that Spandul out of the way
while I have a talk with the Bul-
bur? I can gas the Naffing. It
can’t talk and report what’s been
done to it. But the Spandul
could, if I gassed him.”

“Well,” said Lucy, biting her
lower lip, “I don’t know. It isn’t
as if he was a man, or something.
What’ll I do?”

“He has to be polite to you —
especially if you can get him out
where people can see him. You’ll
think of something.”

“I hope,” said Lucy.

“Sure you will. Let’s go,” Tom
started to lead the way off the
dance floor and suddenly noticed
that she was limping. “Ohmigosh,
I didn’t realize I’d stepped on
you that hard!”

“It’s all right,” said Lucy,

180

GALAXY

bravely. “Maybe I can use it as
an excuse to make him stay with
me.”

“That’s an idea,” said Tom.
They were off the dance floor
now and he lowered his voice.
“I’ll tell him I want him to take
care of you while I go for a
doctor to make your foot more
comfortable. Then, when I leave
you with him, you get him away
from the entrance there any way
you can.”

He broke off suddenly. A fan-
fare of something like trumpets
had just silenced all the talk in
the room. The crowd was split-
ting apart down the middle, leav-
ing the center of the floor clear.
Luckily, Tom and Lucy were al-
ready on the side of the room
they wished to reach.

“I wonder what’s happening?”
said Lucy. “Oh, dear. I wish we
had Rex with us.”

“Rex!” said Tom. “What good
would it do to have that moose
of a dog along?”

“He could keep us in touch
with each other.”

“How? Just because we picked
up enough telepathic sense from
that Oprinkian to understand
Rex doesn’t mean he’d be any
use to us now. What I wish is
that we’d been able to go one
step further and understand peo-
ple’s thoughts. Even each other’s
thoughts. That’s what we need
now.”

46TF Rex was with you and
trouble came, he’d start
broadcasting excited thoughts,
and then I’d know you were in
trouble.”

“What good would that do?
You couldn’t do anything about
it. No, believe me, Rex would be
just what we needed to bollix
things up,” said Tom. “Besides
I’m happy to have a rest from
those inane canine thoughts of
his. ‘Good Tom,’ ‘Good Lucy,’
‘play ball?’ — all day long.”

Tom broke off suddenly. The
trumpets had sounded again, a
wild, violent shout of metal
throats. Now, bounding down
through the open lane in the mid-
dle they could see an alien fully
eight feet tall, approaching and
bellowing greetings to people in
the crowd.

“It’s him,” said Tom. “Him,
the Jaktal Ambassador, Bu Hj-
ark. Just look at him!”

Bu Hjark was a huge lizard-
like alien, with a heavy, power-
ful tail. Elbows out, huge hands
half-clenched, he danced down
the open space like a boxer
warming up in the ring. Brilliant
ribbons and medals covered his
silver tunic and shorts. Into a
gem-studded belt was fastened a
heavy, curve-bladed sword.

“Ho! Ho! Welcome! Wel-
come!” he roared. “Great pleasure
to have you all here! Great pleas-
ure. Greetings, Brakt Dul Jokt.

WHO DARES A BULBUR EAT?

181

Evening, Mr. Vice-President!
Great evening, isn’t it?. Find
yourself seats, respected entities,
and let me show you how the
Jaktal entertain.”

“What does he need a sword
for?” whispered Lucy, staring.
“With those teeth and nails?”
“And that tail,” said Tom.
“Just part of his costume, no
doubt. Wait until the entertain-
ment starts. Then we can slip
off while everybody’s watching.”
“Positions, everybody!” shout-
ed Bu Hjark, and added some-
thing in Jaktal. A crowd of ape-
like beings in full metal armor
trotted in and formed a protective
wall in front of the audience.
Laughing hugely, Bu Hjark took
off his sword-belt and tossed it
to one of these.

“Gloks,” explained Tom in
answer to Lucy’s inquiring gaze,
nodding at the beings in armor.
“A little brighter than the Naff-
ings, not so bright as the Span-
duls. Sort of high-grade morons.
But extremely strong for their
size.”

“First,” Bu Hjark was crying,
“let in the Bashtash!”

r I ’'HERE was a moment’s pause,
then a gasp from the far end
of the room, drowned out by a
sudden bestial bellow. Something
the general shape of a rhinoceros
but not so large, charged down
the aisle full tilt at Bu Hark, who

met it with flailing hands and
tail, and a deep-chested shout.
Amid roarings and snarlings, they
rolled on the floor together.

“I can’t look,” said Lucy, hid-
ing her eyes.

“It’s all right, it’s all over,”
said Tom, a few moments later.
“He wrung its neck. See, some
Gloks are carrying it off.”

“Now, for the armed Wlack-
ins!” shouted Bu Hjark. And a
moment later, a herd of five
small, centaur-like creatures,
clutching sharpened stakes, gal-
loped down upon Bu Hjark, who
joined battle with them gleefully.

“Let’s get going,” whispered
Tom.

“Yes, let’s,” said Lucy with, a
shudder. They threaded their
way through the staring crowd
to the shadowy corner which led
back to the room where they had
discovered the Bulbur.

“Limp more!” said Tom. He
guided her toward the lighted
doorway. “Hey! Spandul?”

The Spandul they had seen
earlier emerged from the room.
Its eyes glittered suspiciously
upon them.

“What iss the masser?” it
hissed. “Guests will be more
comfortable in main hall.”

“My mate has hurt herself. I
insist you give me a hand here,”
said Tom. “I need help.”

“Help?”

“I must get a doctor. Right

182

GALAXY

now!” said Tom. “You under-
stand? Find her a chair. Look
after her while I find a doctor!”
“Doctor?” hissed the Spandul.
It glanced back into the room
behind it, and then out again at
Tom and Lucy.

“A chair,” moaned Lucy, cling-
ing to Tom.

“What’re you waiting for?”
snapped Tom. “Is this the way
you do things here at the embas-
sy? I’ll speak to the Ambassador
himself about this!”

“Yesss, yesss. I help,” said the
Spandul, gliding forward. It took
hold of the arm of Lucy which
Tom was not holding. “Chair.
Thisss way.”

“Good. Stay with her,” said
Tom. “I’ll go after a doctor.”

He turned and plunged back
into the crowd. As soon as he
was out of sight, however, he
stopped, waited for a moment and
then slowly began to work his
way back.

Ill

XITTHEN he arrived once more
” at the shadowy entrance,
it was empty. He slipped quickly
back to the doorway, taking
what appeared to be an lifetime
fountain pen from his pocket as
he approached the doorway.
Holding it, he peered inside. The
Naffing, curled up in a corner,
reared up at the sight of him.

He pointed the pen at it and
pressed the clip. There was an
almost inaudible pop. The Naf-
fing wavered a minute and then
sank down to lie still on the floor.

“What is it?” fluted the jelly
on the table, paling to near trans-
parency. “Have you come to kill
me:

“No,” said Tom. He glanced
behind him and saw the entrance
still deserted, the crowd still oc-
cupied with the combat going on.
He slipped into the room. “I want
to talk to you.”

“Take my worthless life, then,”
keened the jelly. “I have nothing
worth talking about.

“Yes, you have,” said Tom.
“You can tell me about yourself.”

“Myself?” A little color began
to flow back into the Bulbur. “Ah,
I see. It is not me. It is the high
role I have been chosen to play
that makes me an object of in-
terest to you.”

“Oh? Oh yes, that of course,”
said Tom. “Let me hear you de-
scribe it in your own words.”

The Bulbur turned pink.

“I am not worthy,” it mur-
mured.

“Tell me,” said Tom. The Bul-
bur turned flame-colored.

“I am . . it began and then
its voice almost failed it, “the . . .
most important item . . .” At that
its voice did fail it.

“Go on,” said Tom, drawing
close to it.

WHO DARES A BULBUR

EAT?

183

“I cannot. The emotion in-
volved is too strong.”

The Bulbur had deepened its
red color until it was almost
black. Its voice seemed strangled
and unnatural. Tom cast another
glance at the doorway.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s talk
about things you can talk about
for a moment. Tell me about
yourself — aside from what you’re
supposed to do here.”

“But I am nothing,” sang the
Bulbur, paling relievedly. “I am
a mere blob. A shameful blob.”
“Shameful?” said Tom.

“Oh, yes,” said the Bulbur,
earnestly. “A shameful quiver of
emotions. A useless creature,
possessing only a voice and the
power of putting forth weak
pseudopods to get about. A pus-
illanimous peace-worshipper in a
universe at war.”

“Peace?” Tom stiffened. “Did
you say peace- worshipper?”

- “Oh, yes. Yes,” fluted the Bul-
bur. “It is the main cause of my
shame. Ah, if only the worlds of
the universe were oriented to my
desires!” Its voice sank, and took
on a note of sad reasonableness,
not untouched with humor. “But
obviously, if it had been meant to
be that way, all life forms would
be cast in the shape of Bulburs —
and this, manifestly, is not the
case.”

“Look,” said Tom with another
glance out the doorway, to see

that the way was still clear, “I’m
afraid I don’t understand you.
What do you mean, peace-
worshipper?”

“If you will permit me,” said
the Bulbur humbly. “I might sing
you a little melody?”

“Well, if it’ll help,” said Tom.
“Go ahead.”

r T , HE Bulbur turned a pale,
happy pink. A thread of mel-
ody began to pour forth from it.
Up until now, Tom had been too
concerned to figure out how a
three-layer aspic, even one of
large size, could manage to talk
and sing. But now, looking closer,
he perceived, palely moving and
pulsating within the body of the
Bulbur, almost transparent or-
gans and parts — heart, lungs, and
throat among others, with a clear
channel leading to a small mouth
in the very top of the being. He
was also suddenly aware of pale,
almost transparent eyes ringing
the upper tier like decorations on
a wedding cake in jelly form.

But almost as soon as he had
seen this, he began to forget all
about it. The melody he was
listening to began to pass beyond
mere sound, began to pass be-
yond mere music. It moved com-
pletely inside him and became
a heart-twisting voice speaking
of peace, beyond any other voice
that could possibly speak in op-
position. He felt himself swept

184

GALAXY

away. It was only with a sudden,
convulsive effort that he broke
loose from the hold of that voice
upon him.

“Wait! Hold it!” he gasped.
“I get it. I understand.”

The Bulbur broke off sudden-
ly, with a sound very much like
a sob.

“Excuse me,” it whispered.
“It’s shameful, I know, but I was
carried away.”

“Well, it’s not shameful, exact-
ly,” said Tom, clearing his throat.
“I mean — there’s more to life
than that, of course. But I don’t
see why you think you have to
be ashamed of it.”

“Because,” said the Bulbur,
going a sad, translucent blue, “it
is my mark — the mark of my
difference from all the rest of
you. I cannot stand to force my
opinion on anyone else. I have no
virtues. It is quite right that I
should suffer.”

“Suffer?”

“Ah, indeed — suffer. Oh,” said
the Bulbur, pinkening again, “it’s
a great honor, I know. I should
be rejoicing. But I’m a failure at
rejoicing, too.” And now it did
sob, quite distinctly.

“Wait a minute, now,” said
Tom. “You seem to have things
all twisted up. What gives you
the idea nobody but you prefers
peace to fighting?”

The Bulbur turned completely
transparent. “You mean you also

find peace to be a pleasant and
desirable thing?”

“Of course,” said Tom.

“Oh — you poor creature,”
breathed the Bulbur. “How you
must suffer.”

“Suffer? Certainly not!” said
Tom. “We like it peaceful. We
keep it peaceful.”

“You keep it peaceful?”

“Well — most of the time,” said
Tom, a little guiltily.

“But what do you do with such
as the Jaktals, the Spanduls, the
Gloks and the Naffings?”

“We — well, we stop them,”
said Tom. “By force, if neces-
sary.”

“But force? Isn’t that coer-
cion?” said the Bulbur, turning
pink, chartreuse and mauve in
that order. “Isn’t that fighting fire
with fire?”

“Why not? said Tom.

r T'HE Bulbur went slowly, com-
pletely transparent again.
“Oh, I couldn’t!” it said at last.
“Certainly. That singing of
yours is a strong argument. I’d
think you’d use it.”

“Oh, no,” said the Bulbur.
“What if I was successful? That
would make me a dominator of
the Jaktals — and the Spanduls.”
“To say nothing,” said Tom,
“of the Gloks, Naffings and so
forth.” He stopped suddenly,
wondering what had just
alarmed him. Then he noticed

WHO DARES A BULBUR EAT?

185

that the sound of battle from the
main hall had suddenly ceased.
“Why shouldn’t you have things
peaceful if you want them?”

“Why, it’s not natural,” said
the Bulbur. “Look at the matter
logically. If beings had been in-
tended to live in peace — ”

“Good-by!” interrupted Tom,
sprinting out the door. He had
just noticed the crowd stirring
and opening in the direction of
the shadowy entrance and this
room. He made it to the fringes
of the crowd in the main hall
just as a lane parted through
them and a platoon of Gloks ap-
peared, marching toward the
room. Tom slipped down the
open space behind them to the
edge of the open area in the cen-
ter of the floor. A table had just
been set up in the middle of the
floor. A Naffing, operating a sort
of vacuum cleaner, was busy
cleaning up a few last spots of
pale blood. Bu Hjark, wearing a
few neat bandages, his sword re-
placed, was standing by the table
directing the Naffing. Tom
gained a ringside position, and
all but bumped into Lucy, limp-
ing around the ring in the oppo-
site direction.

“That Spandul finally insisted
on going to get a doctor, himself.
I came to warn you to get out,”
she said. “What happened?”

Before Tom could answer,
there was a fanfare of trumpets.

The crowd opened up again
alongside them and the platoon
of Gloks, now bearing the Bulbur
on its silver stand, marched out
to the table and set stand and
Bulbur up in the middle of it. Bu
Hjark raised his hand for silence
and barked at the Naffing with
the vacuum cleaner, which scur-
ried off.

“Respected Entities!” boomed
Bu Hjark. “I now bring you the
climax to the evening’s enter-
tainment and the commence-
ment of the banquet itself. I have
no doubt, respected Entities, that
you have on occasion tasted rare
and fine dishes. However, tonight
I mean to provide you not mere-
ly with the finest-tasting food
you have ever encountered — a
food which all beings who have
yet tried it rate better than any
other thing they have tasted —
but with certain preliminaries
and appetizers. After which I
shall, with my own hand, prepare
and serve the dish to you.”

He drew his sword and step-
ped a little aside from the table.

“And now,” he said to the Bul-
bur. “Commence!”

“R-respected Entities,.” the
Bulbur began with a slight qua-
ver. It turned remarkably trans-
parent, then washed back to blue
again. “It is a great honor, I as-
sure you, to be the appetizer to
your banquet tonight. We Bul-
burs are a worthless lot, fit only

186

GALAXY

for pleasing the worthwhile pal-
ates of our betters. It is our one
pride and pleasure, to know that
you find us good to — ” the Bul-
bur swallowed audibly and then
took up its speech a little more
rapidly as Bu Hjark scowled at
it — “eat. I cannot express the
intense enjoyment — ” it said rap-
idly “ — that it gives me to be
here tonight, awaiting my su-
preme fulfillment as appetizer to
the banquet you will shortly be
having. To ensure your unal-
loyed enjoyment of me, I will
now,” it said, speeding up even
more under Bu Hjark’s steely,
lizard-like eye, “sing you a
mouth-watering song to increase
your appreciation of my truly
unique flavor.” It broke off and
visibly took a deep breath,
turned pale, but came steadily
back to a solid blue color.

“Tom!” Lucy clutched Tom’s
elbow with fingers that dug in.
“It can’t mean we’re going to eat
it? Tom, do something!”

“What?” said Tom as a small
beginning thread of golden mel-
ody began to emerge, growing in
volume as it continued, from the
mouth of the Bulbur.

“I don’t know. But stop it!”

r^ESPERATELY, Tom looked
around him for inspiration.
He thought of how he had almost
begun to convince the Bulbur
that its attitudes were not unique

in the universe. He thought of
how effective the Bulbur’s gift of
song had proved in the room
when the Bulbur sang to him.
What we need is another Bulbur
to sing it into resisting the Jaktal,
he thought — and, with that, in-
spiration came to him. He
opened his mouth and, in his best
bathroom baritone, burst into
song:

“Allons, enfants de la patrie — ”
he sang.

Almost with the first word,
Lucy chimed in with him. Her
untrained but clear soprano
picked up the second line.

“ — Le jour de gloire — Sing!”
she cried to Monsieur Pourtoit,
who was standing across the open
space from them. He bowed to
her gravely. He looked a little
puzzled, but after all he was a
Frenchman. He opened his
mouth and joined a resonant,
trained voice to her tones and
Tom’s.

“What is this?” roared Bu
Hjark, spinning around to face
Tom. His lizard face was agape,
showing great dog teeth. He
lifted the sword ominously in his
hand. Tom swallowed, but con-
tinued to sing.

The Marseillaise, the anthem
of France, was beginning to
sound its battle cry against tyr-
anny from other confused but
cooperative lips. The sword
swung up. The Gloks turned as

WHO DARES A BULBUR EAT?

187

one man toward Tom. Suddenly
a clear, pure note, two octaves
above high F, trilled through all
the sound of the room, striking
them motionless. The whole
room turned toward the table.

f I ''HE fine, thrilling note was
■*- proceeding from the Bulbur.
It had stretched upward until it
was almost twice its original
height. From what well of knowl-
edge it had picked up the neces-
sary information Tom was never

to discover, but it had changed
color. Its lowest tier was now red,
its second tier blue, its top tier
white. As they all stood, as if
attention, it broke magnificently
into the French anthem to
liberty:

“Against us long, a tyranny,”
it sang in wild, masterful accents.
“A bloody sword has waved on
high!”

It was pitching its notes direct-
ly at Bu Hjark. Those assembled
saw the full power of the Bul-

bur’s melody-bom emotional
might driving through the savage
ego of the Jaktal like a metal
blade through the tender body of
a Bulbur. Now it caught the
whole assemblage up in its song.
Spellbound, a chorus of diplo-
matic and government personnel
harking from old Sol to the fur-
thest of the Pleiades, roared to
the tune of the Marseillaise:

Too long have you kept us
subject,

With your Spanduls, your
Naffings and your Gloks!
Why shouldn’t peace be
sweet?

Who dares a Bulbur eat?
Have done! Have done!

Let there be an end!

It’s be-autiful PEACE —

From this hour on, my friend!

And, as the last great chord
of voices crashed into silence, the
huge figure of the Jaktal Ambas-
sador could be seen to shiver

188

GALAXY

XJ L

WHO DARES A BULBUR

E AT ?

189

through all its length and, leaning
more and more at an angle with
eyes glazed, topple at last to
thunder upon the floor like .some
mighty ruined tower. And the
voices of the Spanduls and Gloks
present rose in one great wail,
crying, “Zzatz! Zzatz! Zzatz . .

When their cries at last died
away into silence, the Bulbur on
the table could be seen to have
taken on an all-over shade of
perky pink.

“Jaktals,” it mentioned, in mild
but audible tones as it leaned
above the fallen Bu Hjark, “are
also supposed to be very good
eating.”

66 A ND that remark,” said Tom

-^*-the evening of the next day,
after he had finished work, waded
through the softball game in the
street before their house, patted
Rex, the Great Dane, and kissed
Lucy, “will undoubtedly go down
in the history books as the harsh-
est statement ever made by an
adult Bulbur.”

“But what’s going to happen
to the Bulburs now?” asked
Lucy, as she gave Tom a Mar-
tini and Rex a bowl of Scotch
and milk.

“Well, this one told us his race
doesn’t want anything to do
with running the Jaktal empire.
He turned the authority over to
us humans. All other Bulburs, he
said, would ratify that move, if

they were contacted by us — if
for no other reason than that
they wouldn’t want to hurt his
feelings by disagreeing with
him.”

“They must be so sensitive!”
said Lucy.

“Sensitive,” said Tom, taking
a glum sip from his Martini, “but
shrewd. The Bulbur knew very
well he was turning the authority
over to people who’d regard it
as a sacred trust. ‘Greater love
hath no being than to take on
authority as a duty rather than
a privilege,’ he said.”

“You must admit it was quite
a compliment,” said Lucy.

“Yeah,” said Tom, gloomily.
“We’re in for one hell of an ex-
pansion. They’re going to make
me a First Assistant Secretary
with a full department under me.
Twice the work — and a ten per
cent raise in pay.”

“But imagine,” said Lucy radi-
antly. “Me! The wife of a First
Assistant Foreign Secretary!”
Tom sighed heavily. Rex
licked his hand. In the pause in
the conversation the yells from
the softball game outside pene-
trated through the living-room
walls, in spite of their being set
on full sound-block. It sounded
to Tom a little like Glok and
Spandul voices in the distance,
faintly and forebodingly crying
“Zzatz! Zzatz!”

— GORDON R. DICKSON

190

GALAXY

rpHE DAY following Col.

Glenn’s historic round and
round trip, a prominent official
called attention to the problem
that he felt loomed largest ... if
not most immediately urgent. It
is becoming obvious even to offi-
cialdom that we may not be
alone — out there — and that
raises the aforementioned prob-
lem: Communication.

As we in SF are well aware,
the problem is enormous. Innum-
erable author-hours have been
devoted to it. We have trouble
communicating with fellow prod-

ucts of our own cultural environ-
ment, and present experience
with electronic language transla-
tors has demonstrated how tricky
translating thoroughly known
languages can be. Explorers
throughout the centuries have lit-
erally wound up in the soup
through failure to recognize or
comprehend unfamiliar customs.

How, then, can we expect to
tackle completely alien concepts?
A good question, to which many
people wish we had a good an-
swer.

Unfortunately, we have no in-

★ ★★★★ SHELF

191

digenous, non-human, civilized
races to practice on. However,
we may have a good substitute
much closer at hand than we sus-
pect.

MAN AND DOLPHIN by John
C. Lilley, M.D. Doubleday &
Co., Inc.

One of the most thoroughly
overworked words in the review-
er’s vocabulary, the adjective
“fascinating,” must be pressed in-
to service to describe the subject
matter of this book.

Dr. Lilly opens with these
words: “Within the next decade
or two the human species will
establish communication with an-
other species: nonhuman, alien,
possibly extraterrestrial, more
probably marine, but definitely
intelligent, perhaps even intellec-
tual. If no one among us pursues
the matter before inter-species
communication is forced upon
Homo Sapiens by an alien spe-
cies, this book will have failed in
its purpose.”

Provocative introduction, yes?
Lilly himself is fully engaged in
the research that he has so ur-
gently recommended. It is from
that research that his book has
taken shape.

It is a fact that Man is not
supreme in brain size. Elephants
and whales have brains four to
six times as big as ours. However,

Lilly has ruled out experimenta-
tion with these species because of
the great disparity in strength.
(We are far too vulnerable.)
There is one species, however,
that owns a brain comparable in
size to ours and possesses the
ability to vocalize. Neither is it
too difficult to manage. The com-
mon, bottle-nosed dolphin of
Marineland fame fills the bill.

Says Lilly:

“There are many obstacles to
mutual understanding. They
have no written records and make
no artifacts. They have no hands
and build nothing. They can
swim at 20 knots and in a few
days cover thousands of sea miles
in search for food or more desir-
able water temperatures. They
have no need for clothing or shel-
ter. Because they do not have to
resist gravity, they do not need
to sleep . . .

“Dolphins are socially, mutu-
ally interdependent. A baby is
not weaned for 18 to 21 months.
During this period, he is appar-
ently taught many things by the
mother on a purely experiential
and possibly vocal basis . . . dol-
phins help one another in dis-
tress. Sometimes complex and
concerted action is taken after
complex vocalization.”

Libby, finding that dolphins
can mimic human sounds, is at-
tempting to teach them our lan-
guage. One dolphin experimented

192

GALAXY

with him to determine our range
of audibility. (Ours ranges from
0-20 kc, theirs from 0-200 kc.)

Despite his obvious compas-
sion and concern, all six of his
first test subjects died.

Lilly is pioneering in virgin
territory. He has to invent experi-
mental procedures as he pro-
gresses and failures must out-
number successes. However, as
any SFeer can tell him, there is
a most uncomfortable parallel be-
tween his investigation and the
plot of many terror-provoking
yarns. The theme, humans as ex-
perimental subjects of an alien
species, has created acres of
gooseflesh. Despite Dr. Lilly’s ob-
vious solicitude, the role of the
intelligent dolphins evokes em-
pathy, sympathy and pity.

Lilly concludes:

“Even if we are successful, we
shall still not be fully prepared
to encounter intelligent life forms
not of this earth. At most we shall
have graduated from the kinder-
garten of inter-species communi-
cation.”

THE LONG AFTERNOON OF
EARTH by Brian Aldiss. Signet
Books

The dolphin figures promin-
ently in Aldiss’s all-stops-removed
fantasy of a far future and a
non-revolving earth. Mankind
has survived also, as a green-

skinned, tree-dwelling, two-tov,.
high creature totally intent on
mere survival in a world in which
the vegetable has almost totally
supplanted the animal, whether
walker, crawler, flyer, burrower
or predator. It has even produced
keen intelligence in the form of
a fungus-like, symbiotic morel.

Aldiss’s completely engrossing
yarn is far too involved to ex-
cerpt, but the problem of inter-
species communication is ignored:
All his intelligences speak collo-
quial English. Despite this, and
occasional cuteness, Aldiss’s book
is a tour-de-toTce guaranteed to
startle the most blase SF buff.

Rating: * * * * V 2

WHEN THEY COME FROM
SPACE by Mark Clifton.
Doubletlay & Co.

Clifton envisions a normal bu-
reaucratic snafu summoning the
wrong Ralph Kennedy, Mr. in- -
stead of Dr., to Washington to
serve as Staff Psychologist of the
Dept, of Extraterrestrial Life
Research, Space Navy, specializ-
ing in the Adaptation of Extra-
terrestrial Beings to Earth Ecol-
ogy. Ironically, when ET’s do
land on Earth, Mr. Ralph Ken-
nedy turns out to be the one hu-
man capable of dealing with
them.

Bureaucratic Washington is
hard put to survive Clifton’s

★ ★★★★ SHELF

193

vitriolic pen and all mankind
rates low on his scale. The In-
vaders, because they discover our
mass mentality to be so low, are
convinced that our scientific
achievements are the efforts of
another race strangely absent. To
match our mental level, they ma-
terialize as the incarnation of all
bad TV Space Cadet programs;
broad-shouldered, six-five, mod-
est (Shucks, Ma’m) and with
charming Texas drawls. And that
takes care of the communication
problem.

Rating : * * * V 2

THE FALLING TORCH by Al-
gis Budrys. Pyramid Books

The yarn itself is a crackling
good one. The inept, not-too-
bright son of Earth’s president-
in-exile, parachuted with wea-
pons to enable the guerrillas to
mount an all-out offensive against
the infinitely superior enemy, is
plunged beyond his depth.

Rating: ****

OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET
by C. S. Lewis. Collier Books

In Lewis’s classic, a brilliant,
but shady, scientist and his finan-
cial partner shanghai a philolo-
gist friend to serve as a sacrifice
to weird creatures of Malacandra
(Mars). (Of course, this descrip-
tion does no justice whatsoever

to Lewis’s evocative and provoca-
tive allegory.)

The author’s choice of a philol-
ogist hero neatly solves the com-
munication problem by providing
the training necessary to achieve
a working knowledge of the alien
language.

INVADERS FROM THE IN-
FINITE by John W. Campbell,
Jr. Gnome Press, Inc.

“Skylark” Smith’s only real
competitor for the super-science
heavyweight title of yore was the
esteemed editor of Analog. In
fact, this 30-year-old story of
time-travel, planet smashing and
billion-light-year jaunts left
Campbell no place to go — ex-
cept to rebel against this type of
.yarn with his Don A. Stuart
stories that completely altered
the course of modern SF.

Campbell brushes off commu-
nication by employing thought
transference via “Ortolian head-
set” or by the “Venerian tele-
pathic method.” And so much for
that subterfuge.

The communication problem
may never arise. We may be
alone, which is unthinkable, or
our nearest neighbors might be
too far away to drop in on us.
But should they, Dr. Lilly’s work
will be the foundation on which
our attempt at intercourse will
rest. — FLOYD C. GALE

194

GALAXY

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